Cultural practices such as early child marriage, discriminating against women, etc militates against Ghana’s quest to attain SDG goal 5. Ghana has in deed make significant progress to close the gender gap in terms to legislation and other state mechanism to attain this goal.
However, there are structural cultural problems that impedes against this targets. Women are vulnerable and are constantly abuse in our societies with some being accuse of witchcraft just because they challenge the status-quo or are vulnerable. Ghana has not pas the Affirmative Action Bill that seeks to solve the problem of gender disparity however, political appointees tries to tilt the balance even though their efforts are still not enough.
Female political appointees and representation in Ghana’s legislature is not encouraging. This show that even though the government is making efforts to attain the SDG goals by 2030, these efforts need a more radical change that is geared towards cultural and social reforms to attain these goals.
Inequality is one key factors that can bring a country to the brink of civil war or breakdown of social structures. Even though Ghana is a unitary State, the continues polarization of certain national issues and how politicians are quick to make political gains out of every situation has further deepening some of this dichotomy.
Ethnic groups whose geographical location transcends national boundaries often perceived as non-Ghanaians. Minority groups are sometimes overlooked in a multicultural communities. The dominance of language and cultural hegemony by the Akan ethnic group makes some competing groups feel irrelevant.
Stigma among disability groups persist even though it frown upon by all. Some minority groups (LGBTQI+) whose sexual orientation are considered as misfit and social aberration is stigmatize, and discriminate upon and sometimes may lose their economic, social and political rights. However, there seems to be a consensus when it comes to practice that are illegal under Ghana’s law and considered abominable as well.
Every democratic nations is built on strong and firm institutions. Having strong institution would mean that, justice and peace would be the resultant effects. Ghana is praised as the citadel of democracy in Africa yet, its democratic institutional growth is still not the best. There’s injustice within the judicial system with the law trapping small insects and leaving bigger ones. The political class disregard the law with impunity and immunity thus, defying the sanctity of our courts. Peace in Ghana is just the silence of the majority who are either gagged or are afraid to speak.
Comparing Ghana to other countries, it can be argued that the country is peaceful and have stronger institutions with fair trial and justice system. But from 2016 onwards, our institutional growth has kept on dwindling in terms of trust and ability to function fairly with huge polarization of our society.