Source: The Africa Report

The perpetration of violence of against women and girls in Ghana remains widespread, a concern Amnesty International raised on Wednesday in its 2014/15 human rights report.

A total of 16,275 cases of violence were reported to the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service in 2013, the organisation said.

The organisation noted that violence against women in the West African country affected women of all kinds of backgrounds and ages, including domestic and intimate partner violence, emotional abuse, same-sex relationship violence, sexual assault and abuse as well as brutalities against women with disabilities.
Although Ghana has a law that prohibits domestic violence, victims are not provided with adequate protection and legal assistance to lodge complaints with the police-run victim support unit, the report said.
Amnesty has also raised concern over Ghana's maintaining of the death sentence, although it says an on-going constitutional review process could lead to abolition of the law.

"Courts continue to hand down death sentences, [though] no executions have taken place since 1993," the executive director of Amnesty International, Ghana, Lawrence Amesu told journalists on Wednesday.
In March the Constitutional Review Implementation Committee submitted a draft bill to Ghana's Attorney General and Minister of Justice to amend provisions of the 1992 constitution, which included a proposal to abolish the death penalty.
Amnesty has, therefore, called on the Ghanaian authority to make human rights central to its political programme.

• Ghana