Human rights at crossroads

My attention has been drawn to an erroneous fact relating to my name by friends, colleagues and readers of the Daily Graphic newspaper.

Apparently, in the weekend’s issue of the Daily Graphic of Saturday, November 2, 2024, an Emeritus Professor of Politics from the London Metropolitan University, Professor Jeffrey Haynes, said the name, George Bernard Shaw, is my pseudonym.

May I humbly state that I was born, baptised and christened by my father the late Robert Kwesi Shaw as George Bernard Shaw and all my educational certificates, from primary school to university, including the name in the register of lawyers, both in the register of the Honourable Society of Inner Temple (England) and that of the General Legal Council of Ghana, bears that name.

Headline

Having settled that little matter, let me continue the topic at hand. I am sure there are some among the readership of this column who may be alarmed, or indeed shocked at the heading above.

This is because they may consider it to be a bit far-fetched or over the top. If this is true, then I will be satisfied because it is meant to jolt our collective sense and cajole us into engaging in a serious debate as to the state of human rights in present-day Ghana.

Human rights

Human rights, as we know, are moral rights and entitlements which we all possess by virtue of our humanity — they are universal rights which are inherent to every human being regardless of nationality, sex, ethnic origin, skin colour, religion, language or any other status.

At the heart of the human rights project, which has been with us from antiquity but gained international recognition with the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, is the upholding of human dignity.

The 30 articles of the UDHR have provided the principles and building blocks of current and future human rights conventions, treaties, legal instruments and most modern constitutions, of which our 1992 Constitution is no exception.

As a matter of fact, most of the fundamental human rights found in Chapter 5 of our Constitution are almost carbon copies of the rights enumerated in the UDHR.

Catalyst

The catalyst for the posing of the question in the heading of this article is the human rights issues laid bare by the recent spate of protests and the arrests, detention and ongoing prosecutions of the protesters, in particular the rights to freedom of expression and assembly, the presumption of innocence in criminal trials and the right to personal liberty.

A feature of all democratic states is the respect, adherence, promotion and enforcement of human rights.

In fact, one of the important indices in measuring the democratic credentials of any country is a function of how human rights are respected, observed and promoted in that country.

Ghana has prided itself as a democratic republic in the global arena, especially in Africa, and it is for that reason alone that we wish to engage all and sundry in a collective discussion on the issue to identify solutions if indeed human rights in Ghana are in danger of being undermined or eroded.

The pertinent questions which will be engendered by that discussion, amongst others, will be how easy or difficult is it for one to be able to freely express his/ her opinion on matters of national importance; how freely can citizens embark on demonstrations to express their opinions, either in support or against important national issues; how professional are the police force in dealing with matters of demonstrations; to what extent is the efficacy of the constitutional guarantees of the right to be presumed innocent in criminal trials and the right to personal liberty.

Demonstrators

The arrested demonstrators are currently standing trial at our courts on charges including unlawful assembly, unlawful destruction of property etc. The trials, no doubt, will focus attention on the judiciary — the traditional bastion and protector of rights in democracies.

A lot will depend on the interpretation and application of fundamental rights under siege.

We hope that in their noble job of interpreting these constitutional rights, our judges will have uppermost in their minds, the universally accepted truism of constitutional interpretation, that they are ‘sui generis’, that is to say, in a unique class of their own and, as such, are to be interpreted broadly, expansively and teleologically to give meaning to the rights.

We await, as a nation, to see what transpires and, as we wait, continue the discussion.

The writer is a lawyer.
E-mail: georgebshaw1@gmail.com