POLITICS-GHANA: Marital Rape Under The Spotlight

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Isabella Gyau

ACCRA, Jul 3 2003 (IPS) - -"How can my wife tell me I have raped her?" Atsu Nutor a carpenter asked while sipping the locally prepared gin popularly known as Akpeteshie. "That would be the end of the marriage," his friend Kwame Obi, also a carpenter, answered.

These days such conversations are common in public places in Ghana.

A section of Ghanaian society, especially men, are boiling with anger as the country prepares to place before Parliament a Domestic Violence Bill which has controversial sections on Marital Rape. Discussions abound in drinking bars and eating houses as to how the law will affect both men and women.

Part Two under the Protection Orders of the Bill states that the court may prohibit a person from "forcing the applicant to engage in any sexual contact, whether married or not, or engaging in any sexual contact that abuses, humiliates or degrades the applicant or otherwise violates the applicants sexual integrity whether married or not."

While some women’s rights activists, who are sponsoring the bill, say they are eagerly lobbying Parliament to pass the bill, several men and traditional authorities are annoyed and say that the section would result in the criminalisation of sex within a marriage.

The Head of the Gender and Economic Reform Programme in Africa (GERA), Dzodzi Tsikata, says the bill has brought to the fore a debate among many Ghanaians as to whether rape within a marriage actually does exist. "Women have to be vigilant about it and ensure that the bill is passed," Tsikata said.

However, male Parliamentarians are tight lipped on their positions on the marital violence issue that would come before them and some of them are said to have protested on the quiet to the Minister for Women and Children’s Affairs. Some say they are not aware if the bill will serve the interests of their constituents.

Angela Dwamena Aboagyge, Head of the Ark Foundation, a women’s rights advocacy organisation says many women are suffering in silence as they are raped by their husbands. "Every woman needs to lobby her Member of Parliament to see that this law passed," says Dwamena Aboagye who is also a human rights lawyer.

The Commissioner of Ghana’s Human Rights Administration, Justice Francis Emile Short, places the problem at the doorstep of the plural legal system of marriage in the country. He cites the high bride price or dowry as being one of the possible causes of violence against women including marital rape in the Ghanaian society.

"In all parts of Ghana, the transfer of bridal wealth from one family to the other under customary marriage tends to reduce women from active participants to passive recipients. In Ghanaian society where bride price is unsympathetically high the man, after painfully paying this price, is likely to treat the wife more as a possession than a partner in marriage," Short said.

He said in such a case the initial, and very important contract, seems to establish the ground rules by which unequal power relations are nurtured in the home.

Most of these issues, he said, results in wife battering cases. Justice Short said as of the end of October 2002, wife-battering cases had risen to 400 percent over the total figure for the whole of 2001. The fact that the woman agrees to be a wife does not mean she has agreed to consent to sex all the time," he said.

According to the World Bank, in 1993 alone, violence against women was ranked as high as cancer as the cause of death and incapacitating women of childbearing age. It was also a greater cause of ill health than road accidents and malaria combined.

According to Short, the unequal distribution of power between the sexes in a society that emphasises male dominance and female subordination may partly account for women being mostly victims of violence.

The World Health Organisation, WHO, estimates that at least 20 percent of the world’s women have been physically or sexually abused by a man. In Ghana, studies show that 30 percent of women have experienced domestic violence.

In the United States alone 700,000 women are raped or sexually assaulted while two million girls aged five to 15 are trafficked, sold or forced into commercial sex.

Physical aggressive acts between husband and wife range from marital rape, battering, punching, biting, hurling objects and using deadly weapons. "I believe that the Ghanaian home is gradually becoming an environment for nurturing violence. Studies and Media reports show that marital and domestic murders account for majority of murders that occur in Ghanaian society and husbands are responsible for more than 50 percent of such murders," he said.

Married women are, however, reluctant to report sex which takes place under coercion and threat of death due to the resultant consequences. "Rape is likely to occur unreported within marital relationships in which there are distinct unequal power relations and where the woman is completely economically dependent on the man resulting in the woman not having any input in decisions concerning the household.

Again, Short said, sexual violence may not be reported due to the stigma that is attached to the perpetrator and the victim.

The Executive Director of the African Women Lawyers Association (AWLA), Edna Kuma, says it is sad to note that the world is not free from gender based violence ten years after a United Nations resolution on the issue. "The rights of women to live lives free from violence is still a mirage and the rape, defilement, assault, sexual abuse and harassment of our sisters still continues," she said.

Kumah believes that the behaviour of men towards their wives will only change if there are tougher laws to deal with perpetrators of violence.

Deputy Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Gloria Akuffo, says sexual violence including rape in marriages have led to threats,deformities and even deaths. Calling for support for the proposed Bill, Akuffo said Ghan a is a party to the UN Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women(CEDAW).

A Supreme Court judge, Justice Allan Brobbey, says he is skeptical about the trial of marital rape cases. He said already the refusal of bail had implications in sexual and domestic violence cases especially where the accused on release from custody would return to the same spouse he has brutalised.

"Sometimes if the judge gets to know that the accused is the breadwinner because the complainant is an unemployed housewife, what is the judge expected to do?" Justice Brobbey asked.

Ghana’s Minister for Women and Children’s Affairs, Gladys Asmah, who is said to be under pressure from her colleague male Members of Parliament to scrap the bill says definitions of domestic violence emanating from other cultures, particularly Western, European and American notions, concepts and traditions may not necessarily be appropriate for Ghana’s circumstances. This she said, is as a result of differences in culture especially with regards to the issue of marital rape in the proposed domestic violence bill.

Asmah, who was speaking at a sensitisation workshop on Domestic Violence organised by the international Federation of Women lawyers (FIDA), said: "What happens when a woman comes out publicly to say that she has been raped by her husband or that she has been forced into bed by her husband? She runs to the police, the man is arrested, charged and convicted and sentenced, now the question is can this woman return to her matrimonial home when her husband is in prison or heavily fined?" she asked.

"My Ministry believes that giving society, and for that matter, the people of Ghana the opportunity to consider other options will be welcomed because every traditional area may have its own ideas about what constitutes domestic violence and how to address it," she said.

According to Asmah, the most controversial provision in the whole proposal is the vexed question of marital rape which, she says, seems to be prevalent in some countries and cultures and cannot be imported without modification into our socio-cultural milieu.

She suggested an extensive social survey among various communities in the country to ascertain conjugal obligation of spouses who are "properly or legally married."

"Although some of these norms may be found to be down right archaic and unacceptable in modern Ghana, there should be an examination to see whether they could be modified," Asmah said. She said it is only after such a survey and educational programmes that the content of the law dealing with marital rape may be framed to enable the law that would emerge be accepted by all Ghanaians.

"We are first and foremost Ghanaians and so we must first of all find home brewed solutions to our problems," she said adding that "each and every one of us have a head of the family, he and the elders who contracted the marriage should be given the opportunity to settle the dispute."

We need to bear in mind the sacred nature of the marriage institution without which the essence of family is undermined and incomplete, Asmah said. She added that Domestic Violence and its effect on family life in the country could not be dealt with solely by legislation.

"Legislation is definitely one of the instruments required to deal with the perpetrators of this unsociable behaviour," Asmah said adding but it should be drawn up taking into account the cultural, traditional and attitudes and values of the various communities in the country.

Asmah’s suggestion on marital rape did not go down well with some women’s rights activists who are currently lobbying members of Parliament to pass the bill which is yet to be placed before the house.

The Administrator of FIDA, Gloria Ofori-Boadu, says she believes men who rape their wives should face the music. "There are many avenues through which women can seek redress in any sour relation."

"Abuses do happen in marriages, but it should not be taken as normal. You should talk about it, tell people about it, talk to your pastor, relations, friends, neighbours, lawyer or the police," she said.

She said contrary to the popular belief that violent men are mentally ill, "many abusive men merely exert what they see as their natural right to dominate women."

The President of the Multi Disciplinary African Women’s Health Network (MAWHN), Dr. Afua Hese, also says the WHO has recognised violence against women as a public health issue with long term negative consequences which can affect safe motherhood.

Threats to injure or kill a woman or child as a result of denial of sex, among others, should be properly dealt with by law, she said.

A traditional ruler in Ghana’s Central Region, Nana Kofi Abbeyquaye II, says Ghana’s traditional laws does not recognise any thing like marital rape. "In our setting once a woman consents to marriage, it means the man has sexual rights over her all the time. A woman who wants to continue her marriage has no right to deny her husband sex," he said. (ENDS/IPS/AF/WA/IP/IG/SM/03)

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