Tuesday 13 December 2011

Ghana Education Ministry: 'Train teachers to reduce homosexuality'

English: classroom In Ghana
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By Paul Canning

The Ministry of Education in Ghana has said that the Ministry's HIV/AIDS Secretariat has trained teachers to educate students about homosexuality and its “adverse consequences” including HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Education Ministry Public Relations Officer Paul Krampah told the Accra Mail:
"We are very optimistic that things will change and the incidence of homosexuality in the country will be a thing of the past."
The Mail quotes the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVSSU) of the Ghana Police Service saying that more teenage boys in Junior High and Senior High Schools are becoming 'victims of sexual abuse'.

Many of these young boys and their families, according to the Mail, are reluctant to report such cases to the police.

In February the Deputy Director General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Stephen Adu told Citi News:
“I will agree that homosexuality and lesbianism started with single-sex schools. It has become prevalent and so more people have become aware of it. This is just one of the many problems we have in our educational system.”
In June The National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) in the Volta Region said they would use civic education clubs to 'fight homosexuality in Senior High Schools'.

The Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) have called for specialists to be placed at their disposal to train them on how to deal with homosexuality but has rejected widespread calls for single sex schools to be ended - though because, as the General Secretary of CHASS Felix Essah-Hienno puts it, mixed schools can 'equally breed gays and lesbians'.

Many Ghanaians believe, as Kwaku Adu-Gyamfi writes in Modern Ghana, that:
"Homosexuality is not born, but made. I believe the brainwashing process begins in schools and colleges, where many people develop the desire to experiment the act of having sex with the same sex. In the case of the Ghanaian homosexuals, it's an acquired lifestyle which is mainly derived from boarding schools and the importation of the sexual trade by our open-door hospitality."
Writes Isaac Karikari for Ghana Liberty:
"Second cycle schools have been major hubs for gay and lesbian acts. Senior high schools have been the real hot spots for gay and lesbian activities. It is in those places that gays and lesbians are really made. Underground gay and lesbian cells exist in many senior high schools."
Homosexuality has become a major topic of discussion in Ghana for some time, with international attention on the country following a directive earlier this year by the Western Regional Minister, Paul Evans Aidoo, to the police to arrest people suspected to be gay or lesbian.

Legislators began discussions last month on strengthening legal sanctions against gay people.

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1 comment:

  1. I feel greif to face dreadful intolerance in Ghana. While the lack of devepolment must be primary considerd as a cause of the intolerance and prejudice, and stigmatizing idea, it is the evil homophobia, hate speech, superstitional idea or other discriminatory idea among people of industrial countries including US and Europe that prevent the formation of the Convention on sexual orientation and gender identity.

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