Accra, Aug. 18, GNA - Ghana's quest for accelerated growth would remain a mirage unless there was the recognition to adopt a rights-based approach to development as enshrined in the Constitution. Speaking at a forum in Accra on Thursday, Dr Raymond Atuguba, Executive Director of Legal Resources Centre, said policy makers had so far refused to acknowledge that the country had chosen a Right-Based Approach (RBA) to development.

"We need to be true to ourselves and our Constitution and do an RBA to development," Dr Atuguba told participants at the forum organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) to discuss the trappings to the country's accelerated development.

He said the failure to realise or accept that Ghana had chosen this particular method for social progress had resulted in a lackadaisical approach to the various phases of the development agenda. Dr Atuguba said lack of focus usually gave rise to the high propensity to other agents of development to hijack the process and influence it.

"There are several laws, with wide ranging developmental implications that were basically engineered by a very small segment of the society with limited or no input from other interested parties," he said.

He said the problem was even worse because the country's Universities and institutions of higher learning, which should gather the information for formulation of policies and laws for development, had over the years had their staff taken away by successive governments as Advisers and Ministers.

This, he said, had led to a situation where the country now depended heavily on information and knowledge provided by non-governmental organisations to formulate policies. Participants at the forum agreed that there was the urgent need to outline the country's development goals and find ways through which the country itself could get those ideas to materialise. 18 Aug. 05