The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection on Monday disclosed a strategic road map to ensure gender equality and equity for the empowerment of women.

In view of this strategic empowerment plan, the Gender Ministry has organised advocacy and capacity building programmes for over 2,982 persons on child marriage, sexual and gender based violence, and teenage pregnancy.

Nana Oye Lithur, the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that since the beginning of the year, the Ministry has worked on a number of legislative and policy interventions to ensure gender equality and women empowerment.

“One of these is the Intestate Succession and Property Rights of Spouses Bills, which it co-sponsored. It is currently with the Joint Parliamentary Select Committees on Constitution and Gender,” she noted.

She said the Affirmative Action Bill was also ready to be submitted to Cabinet for consideration…“When passed, the Law will carefully identify and effectively redress areas of social, cultural, economic and educational imbalances and ensure gender equality in Ghana.

“For 2015, I am glad to report that we have implemented several programmes to promote gender equality in political, social and economic development. We have also worked to enhance public awareness of women’s issues and empowered women through the creation of enabling policy and legal frameworks”.

Nana Oye Lithur called for the respect of the rights of every human being, especially that of the vulnerable in our society, adding that, “we therefore have worked to protect the rights of special groups such as the girl child, women, aged and persons living with disabilities”.

The Gender Minister also noted that, growth and mainstream development interventions were not sufficient to reduce the huge number of people living in poverty and to protect the vulnerable from natural or economic shocks.

Nana Oye Lithur said Government has therefore introduced the social protection intervention programmes to target extremely poor people.

She noted that the New Gender Policy would provide broad policy guidelines, strategies and operations/actions in furtherance of government’s commitments to achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment.

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