Imagine your daughter calls you tonight. Not somebody else’s daughter, but yours. The child you raised, educated, prayed over, advised and tried your best to prepare for life. You
The report indicates that commentary on Ghana’s Domestic Violence Act, survivor protection, and public financing.
It further notes that imagine your daughter calls you tonight. Not somebody else’s daughter, but yours. The child you raised, educated, prayed over, advised and tried your best to prepare for life. You taught her to respect herself, choose carefully, work hard, build a future and make good decisions. Now she tells you that the person she shares a home with has assaulted her.
Or imagine it is your son. He tells you in a voice you barely recognize that the person he lives with has been beating him, threatening him, humiliating him, controlling him financially or slowly destroying him psychologically. Perhaps he has stated nothing for months because he already knows what some people will say. “How can a woman beat you?” “You are a man.” “Handle your home.” He has been suffering, but shame has convinced him that silence is safer than asking for help.
What would you tell either of them? You would probably say, “Report it.”
That sounds simple because Ghana has a Domestic Violence Act. Ghana has the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service, commonly known as DOVVSU. Ghana has courts and a Domestic Violence Secretariat. We have a Domestic Violence Fund. We have social welfare officers, health facilities and organizations working in the field. We even have a One-Stop Centre in Accra intended to bring some of those services together.
So, report it. But then comes the question that tells us whether our laws are working in the lives of ordinary people or are merely beautifully written pieces of legislation: What happens after the victim reports?
The Domestic Violence Act, 2007 (Act 732) is not an empty law. It gives important protections to victims. It recognizes that domestic violence goes beyond physical assault and can include sexual, economic, emotional, verbal and psychological abuse.
It places responsibilities on the police when receiving complaints. Police are supposed to assist victims to obtain medical treatment where necessary, help them reach places of safety, help preserve evidence and inform them about available rights and services.
Most significantly, Section 8 under subsection (1) (c) provides that a domestic violence victim assisted by the police to obtain medical treatment is entitled to free medical treatment from the State.
Read that again carefully: free medical treatment from the State.
Now place the law on one side of the table and the lived experience of victims on the other. What happens when a woman who has just been assaulted is told she must find money for something associated with her medical examination?
What happens when she needs transportation from one institution to another? What happens when she needs copies of documents, repeated trips to a police station or court, medication, temporary accommodation, food for herself and her children or simply money to get away from the person who has harmed her?
What happens when an administrative process that looks small to someone sitting behind a desk becomes an impossible financial barrier for someone who left home with nothing but the clothes she was wearing?
This is why we have to stop discussing domestic violence only as a legal issue. It is also a financing issue. A right that exists in legislation but becomes inaccessible because a victim cannot afford the process is not yet a fully functioning right.
