In a follow-up matter, an Expert asked why children were kept in pre-demo detention, whether they were separated from adults, how long they could be held on remand and whether their cases were fast-tracked.
Children were held in pre-trial detention when they were charged with grave sugar daddy Orlando FL offences such as defilement and other sexual offences and stealing in aggravated circumstances, such as armed robbery. Additionally, children were sometimes held in remand homes for their own safety because they risked being victims of retributive acts. Children were kept in special remand homes and were separated from adults. The Juvenile Justice Act specified that any court case involving a child had to be completed within six months and that was the maximum period that a child could be held in pre-trial detention.
The forthcoming amendment to the Refugee Bill would have an expanded mandate that addressed all issues relating to asylum hunters and you may refugees and included a new definition of “family” to encompass children. In Ghana joined Benin, Liberia and Sierra Leone in signing an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) declaration pledging to end statelessness and committing to sign the two international conventions on statelessness.
Turning to boy labour the Committee was informed that Ghana recently underwent a peer-review by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) mechanism which identified gaps in its national plan of action on child labour. Consequently consultations to amend the plan and make it more responsive were underway. To date more than 2,000 children had been rescued from working in the mining industry, and last year alone 300 families received livelihood support to discourage them from sending their children to work in minesmunity-based child protection teams had been established within mining communities which had led to the withdrawal last year of more than 267 children from mining activities.
There were at least 18,000 roadway college students in Ghana of whom 90 per cent were girls and 10 per cent boys, while 51 per cent of street children came from one particular ethnic group. The problem was clearly linked to poverty and girls from the north fleeing early and child marriages. In response a short-term and a long-term plan had been drawn up by the Parliament. One response had been the offering of a range of immediate humanitarian and health services to street girls in major market places in the capital city Accra and other large cities. Other interventions targeted communities in the northern regions of Ghana, such as the provision of cash transfers to pregnant women and women with children aged two years or less and other efforts, such as the provision of education and skill-building training to prevent the exodus of young girls from the north to the urban areas. The Association of Street Children gave out scholarship packages to girls to enable them to go back to school.
The maternal death price remained persistently high, said a delegate, which had led to the policy of free antenatal and delivery care for all women in Ghana. The result was high coverage, with 97 per cent of pregnant women receiving antenatal care and 74 per cent of births being attended by a skilled birth attendant. One consequence had been a shortage of staff and health facilities because more women were coming into health facilities to receive antenatal care and deliver their babies. In response the Government was training midwives who could travel and provide midwifery services at the community level, especially in the most remote areas. Physicians and technicians were also being trained, in particular to address issues such as post-partum haemorrhage which was a leading cause of maternal mortality. The delegate described a pilot project to provide pregnant women who planned to give birth at home with an anti-haemorrhage medication, that did not need to be refrigerated and which they could keep at home in case they needed it during the birth. Caesarean sections were subsidised and blood transfusions were covered by the national health insurance scheme. Pregnant women were asked to identify people who would donate blood for them ahead of the birth in case they needed a blood transfusion.
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