Day: May 5, 2023

Somali authorities say sustained military operations against the al-Shabab terror group have succeeded in reducing militant attacks across the country by 70%.

Efforts to ensure the stability of the capital, Mogadishu, have also been successful – allowing members of the public to peacefully observe the holy month of Ramadan, the Somali cabinet said on Thursday during its weekly meeting that was chaired by Prime Minister Hamsa Abdi Barre.

The cabinet said the army had seized back at least 80 villages and towns since it launched the campaign in south-central Somalia last year.

Government forces, supported by clan militias, have been conducting an offensive against al-Shabab since August 2022.

Before the operation, the militants stepped up attacks, specifically in Mogadishu and army bases, killing dozens of government officials, civilians as well as members of the armed forces.

Source: BBC

Professor Samuel Awuah-Nyamekye, the immediate past Head of the Department of Religion and Human Values, University of Cape Coast (UCC), has made a strong case for the adoption of religious ecological practices to protect the environment.

He argued that Ghana’s ‘self-inflicted’ environmental destruction could only be resolved with the time-tested practices and mechanisms by the various religions, which had conserved the environment for decades.

He, therefore, urged the Government to consult religious organisations and incorporate their inputs, which were mostly science-driven policies, to deal with the menace.

‘The secular means have not been able to resolve the issue; the legislations and policies have failed to resolve the problem of environmental destruction, and so we have to turn to religion and environmental ethics,’ he said.

Prof Awuah-Nyamekye was delivering his professorial inaugural lecture on the topic: ‘The Nexus between Religion and Environment: Matters Arising.’

Establishing the relationship between religion and environment through various academic citations and practical examples, he maintained that the war against ecological onslaught could not be won without religion.

He recounted how traditional believers, for instance, protected the ecosystem by revering lands and rivers, which they saw as gods and goddesses, maintained sacred groves and totems, and instituted sacred days.

He, however, noted with worry the recent disregard for indigenous African traditional practices rooted in environmental consciousness and preservation, a situation he attributed to civilisation.

Christianity had had a terrible impact on the indigenous ways of conserving the environment because the missionaries demonised the traditional mechanisms of protecting the environment, he observed.

However, he was quick to add that the situation was gradually changing because some churches were revising their theology to accept some of the indigenous ways of conserving nature.

Citing a Ghana News Agency (GNA) report, he noted that the original forest cover of Ghana formed about 36 per cent of the land but reduced to 23 per cent in 1972, shrank further to 13.3 per cent in 1990, before dwindling to 10.2 per cent in 2010.

‘And so, you can imagine the situation now,’ he stated.

Prof Awuah-Nyamekye made Biblical and Quranic allusions to support his argument, saying; ‘Anything you add religion to will succeed’.

Religion should inculcate a sense of environmental consciousness in the youth to understand the need to conserve the environment from the scratch, he said.

‘Measures should be put in place to integrate religious environmentalism and its closest field, environmental ethics, in our educational curriculum for the youth to appreciate the need to observe nature.’

‘When we heal the environment, we heal ourselves,’ Prof Awuah Nyamekye said, adding that ‘preaching about God without reference to the wellbeing of the environment is a disservice to God and humanity and anything short of this is ungodly.’

He, thus, charged pastors and imams to devote some preaching time to sensitise their congregation on environmental preservation at least once a week.

‘I believe that this can go a long way to affect the environment positively. To me, the impact of this will be far greater than the annual week declared by some religious organisations to do environmental cleaning.’

He admonished the various faiths to liaise and discuss how they could conserve the environment in a sustainable manner than look down on each other’s efforts.

Prof Awuah-Nyamekye was appointed as an Assistant Lecturer in 2003 at the Department of Religion and Human Values, UCC and upgraded to Lecturer in 2005.

He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2010, Associate Professor in 2014 and elevated to Professor in 2019.

His expertise includes environmental ethics, religion and development, religion and medicine and politics.

The Professor has written and published two books and co-edited two others, done one book review and two encyclopaedia entries.

He has written 23 articles in internationally esteemed scholarly journals, 15 book chapters among other achievements.

He has served in many capacities in his line of duty and is the immediate past Head of Department.

Source: Ghana News Agency

UNESCO has been commemded for supporting a week’s Ethics Teachers Training Course in Accra.

The training, organised by UNESCO offices in Accra and Abuja, in collaboration with the School of Continuing and Distance Education, University of Ghana, aimed at advancing the pedagogical capacity of ethics teaching and improving the quality of ethics education around the world.

The course was a comprehensive training module developed by UNESCO covering topics such as global perspectives on ethics teaching, the UNESCO core curriculum, gender and bioethics, ethics teaching in action, classroom communication, and experience sharing in ethics teaching.

Ms Getrude Owusu-Ansah, a participant, said the course covered everything about ethics.

‘I realised that ethics cut across everything, including our everyday interactions with people.

‘The course has been an eye-opener for me because wherever I find myself, I look at the role of ethics without infringing on people’s rights and responsibilities,’ she said.

Ms Owusu-Ansah, who is a regulatory officer at the Food and Drugs Authority, said she would use the knowledge acquired to positively impact her work for national development.

Mr Christian Nnabuike Onoja, another participant, described the course as ‘awesome’ saying it had broadened his knowledge in ethics training.

‘The group presentations and discussions have helped me gain different perspectives on how best to teach ethics,’ he said.

Professor Hans Van Delden, a course facilitator, urged the participants to maintain the network and ‘preach’ the tenets of ethics in every sphere of their endeavours.

Prof Delden, who is a Lecturer, University Medical Centre of Utrecht, Netherlands, urged universities and educational institutions across the globe to integrate ethics in their curriculum.

The participants were presented with certificates for successful completion of the course.

Source: Ghana News Agency

The ECOWAS Court will on May 31,2023 deliver judgment in a case brought by a Sierra Leonean community alleging the violation of their human rights by the government of Sierra Leone for its failure to protect them from the health hazards caused by the operations of a diamond mining company in the community.

The presiding judge, Justice Gberi-Be Ouattara, announced the date after notifying the parties of a change in the panel of judges due to the expiration of the tenure of one of judges in the previous panel for the case.

Justice Ouattara also reminded the parties that they had previously submitted all their pleadings, which were adopted.

In the initiating application filed before the Court on 29th August 2019, Sia Momoh and seven others asked the Court to hold the Sierra Leonean government liable for its failure to protect them from the human rights abuses suffered from the operations of the company.

Mr Chernor Benedict Jalloh, lead counsel for the Applicants, said the government violated the Applicants’ rights to life, right to human dignity; right to suitable environment with access to clean water; safe housing free from environmental pollution and destruction of farmlands; right to property, health and freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention.

He said that the Applicant and the other complainants were also victims of the fallout of two violent protests, the first by the host community in December 2007 over the impact of the activities of the company and the second in 2012 which was initially by the company’s workers who were later joined by the community.

He added that the explosives used by the company was determined to be dangerous following an environmental impact assessment undertaken by the company based on which the company was obliged to relocate families willing to move.

According to the applicants, the company acted contrary to the agreement as families that refused to move were forcibly ejected and their properties destroyed by agents of the government in support of the mining company, resulting in a violent protest that left some dead and others wounded for which the company denied liability although it disbursed a ‘goodwill donation’ through the Ministry of Mines which was insufficient to cover the medical bills of the victims.

Following the incident, the government set up a judicial commission – Jenkins Johnson Commission to determine the level of involvement of State security agents and make recommendations.

The applicants alleged that the report of the commission, which was submitted in 2008 indicted the state security agents and recommended among others, the prosecution and disciplining of officers indicted, the amendment of the police rules of engagement, the reform of the mining laws and practices, and the suspension of the blasting undertaken by the company until after the resettlement of the indigenes.

The lawyer also told the Court that the government did not implement any of the recommendations thereby exposing the indigenes of the community to continuous rights violations, reiterating that the victims of the 2012 protest received no compensation of any kind and the security agents had not been prosecuted till date.

He said the affected victims comprising those awaiting relocation by the mining company and those already relocated but who were not adequately accommodated by the company formed an association – Marginalised Affected Property Owners Limited (MAPO) to advocate for their right to remedies.

He added that the victims’ standard of living had regressed due to lack of compensation, environmental degradation, inadequate accommodation, poor health conditions, poor access to clean water and loss of property as a result of the activities of the company while some of their lands were turned to dump sites or flooded from diverted water channels.

The applicants also said that they wrote a letter of complaint to Sierra Leone Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) but to no avail.

The Applicants are asking the Court to, among others, declare the government is in violation of their rights; order the investigation and prosecution of perpetrators; comply with the mining lease agreement, and pay compensation to the victims for the physical, psychological and economic stress suffered.

Also on the panel for the case are Justices Dupe Atoki and Sengu Mohamed Koroma.

Source: Ghana News Agency