Have you ever conjectured why the creator of the heavens and earth created a woman? Indeed, when I was in elementary school my class one teacher told me that God took a rest after He had completed the creations and could have decided to continue with his rest since all he had created was pronounced good and beautiful, but He felt a void in his making, He saw the need to create woman, this time, not like the man, who was created by the spoken word, (Kunfayakoon) but by practically molding her out of the bent rib of a man. That is why men need to be patient with women and love them with the fear of God and the highest honesty as possible (They are delicate). This, of course, meant that God Himself recognized that fact that woman is only one of its kinds, so he created her extra-ordinary. He also acknowledged that the order he gave to man to be productive and multiply earlier could never have been achieved if he did not create a women to assist him realize it. Men would have been lonely oooo! The first black President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela indicated in his “Long Walk to Freedom” that, “there is nothing so dehumanizing, than to live without a companion.” Can you imagine a world without women, our mothers, sisters, wives, aunties, and grandmothers? It would have been indeed, boring and the humdrum would have been killing. We can, therefore, safely conclude that a woman is a vessel or an instrument of productivity, not just in bearing children, but in all its ramifications, that is, social, political, economic and so on. It therefore saddens my heart that our society has not yet recognized this obvious secret to financial freedom from poverty, which is investing in women and children. From my little knowledge in Public Policy, poverty may be defined as a state of being poor or in lack or simply put as having little or no money. Poverty in a nation could be as a result of violence as happened in the PNDC era under Jerry Rawlings, war and crime, and environmental mismanagement, mismanagement of a country’s funds as in the case of NDC I and II and even III under President Fiifi Mills or as a result of outbreak of diseases or natural disasters like the Accra floods. A research by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) showed that majority of the people living in poverty is women and children. This is not peculiar only to Ghana as a developing country, but is also a global phenomenon. Let’s critically examine the effects of poverty on women and children. As we all know, poverty basically denies women and children access to basic rights such as the rights to family life, that is how many children I should have with my husband, shelter, quality health facilities, good nutrition, education in the case of the young girls from the northern parts of Ghana in Accra and proper social development as they are never told to be assertive and confident. For instance, most of the girls from Northern Ghana, ran to Accra for menial jobs like Kayayoo because, their living here in Accra does not deny them their rights to eat whatever food they want, choose the kind of man they want to marry, choose whatever cloths they want to wear and whatever social program they want to attend. But, back in the North, majority of them are denied those rights and even forced into marriages as in the case of the high profile case of Mahat who was tied in shackles as what the American slave masters did to Kuntakente, who was forced to adopt the name Tobi. Out-moded cultural engagements also make some of them leave their native regions to Accra. As Victoria Brittain, a former journalist and now a Research Associate with the London School of Economics puts it in her article in the Commonwealth Currents, “the first thing that happens to a community in the economic crises that results from war is that there is no more money for the girls to go to school. With the lose of education and the possibility of future autonomy that it gives girls and women, the entry into the sexual violence trap becomes the more likely and harder to escape.” What it means is that, when a child is deprived of some or all these rights, it simply leads to weakening of the child’s protective environment, leading to abuses and exploitation of that child. Majority of the child prostitutes in Accra are into it due to economic reasons. It blights the lives of those affected, exposing them to ill health, malnutrition and impaired physical and mental development. Hence eating away their energy and undermining their confidence in the future. No wonder most school girls in Ghana are timorous. What does all these grammar mean? It simply means that when poverty exists in a society, and is transferred from one generation to the other, it leads to impoverished, malnourished mothers producing malnourished and underweight babies, which in most cases, leads to avoidable deaths. The few who manage to survive do not grow to their full potential, as earlier mentioned; they suffer from chronic malnutrition, micronutrients deficiency and experience high illness frequency. As such, when such children are enrolled in schools, research has shown that their performance is by far lower than that of well nourished ones. Another factor that might also affect their performance is the inconsistency in the payment of their school fees as a result of poverty, which would make them, develop complex inferiority and impair their concentration on their students. At the end of the day, such affected children would eventually drop out of school, thereby increase the number of child labour, touting and unemployed in the society and if care is not taken, other social vices such as drug abuse and peddling, prostitution and armed robbery as is currently happening under NDC, could develop, which, of course, are unhealthy for the society. It is not for me to argue whether or not our society is impoverished, we do not need a soothsayer to tell us the obvious. Poverty in our nation is basically as a result of corrupt practices like; over invoicing, under invoicing and drinking of tea and water worth 1.3 Billion Cedis and the few enriching themselves at the expense of the majority. What can we do to redistribute the wealth? So that women and children, who I always consider as the endangered species, can be affected positively. For me no society would ever experience a broad base poverty reduction without major and sustained investment in the rights of the people to health, nutrition and basic education. What do we mean by investment in the people and how can we invest in the rights of the people? Investment simply means putting one’s money into something. Businesspeople know the importance of investing in ventures which they believe are profitable to them. It is a responsible government that would invest in the rights of its people. Basic needs such as shelter, food, education, and other social amenities are what a good government should offer its citizens. Under the NDC two in 1998, a DCE in the Northern Region, who had squandered funds meant to build a primary school block in the Tolon-Kumbongu District, had to lay the foundation, build and roof the school in two-weeks only when inspectors notified him of their visit. It should also promote equal rights and for women and children, particularly the girl child to support fully in politics, social and economic development of society. The government should realize that to decide to invest in a woman is tantamount to investing in a nation. Women are naturally nation builders, both at the family level and society level and for that matter it is the responsibility of government to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies and that to me, cannot be fully achieved unless the NDC government go beyond the mere rhetoric of appointing forty per cent women in its cabinet to accept the responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human rights. It was therefore gratifying to note that the NPP government, upon assumption of office in 2001 and upon recognizing the role women and children play in the socio-economic development of this country, created for the first time and in the history of Ghana, the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs. Aside that, the NPP government also introduced the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the School Feeding Programme, the Capitation Grant, Free Maternity Health for pregnant women, free ride for basic school children, the passage of the Domestic Violence Act and the My First Day in School concept as well as reforming the Women and Juvenile Unit of the Ghana Police Service to Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit, all geared towards improving the lots of the vulnerable in society- women and children. Mr. Kufuor and NPP, Ghanaians, would indeed, forever and ever remember you of those kind gestures you single handedly extended to them. It is important for civil society and women groupings in the country to keep focusing the government’s attention on issues that matter most in their lives - the lives of women and their families, access to education, health care, jobs and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights and to participate fully in the political life of Ghana. Despite the above, I still strongly hold the opinion that much have not been done especially enforcing the laws that protect women, not only in Ghana, but around the world and tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated. Even now, in the 21st century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world’s refugees. In Ghana, children are still engaged in child prostitution, child labour, and women are raped at the full glare of the public-this is inhuman. Men still openly resist women in decision making. And when women are excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse. I believe that it is time to break the silence. It is time for women to say that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights. Much still needs to be done especially in assisting women in the area of credit facilities and skill training for them also to be financially independent as well as making human rights women’s rights and women’s rights human rights once and for all. I wish to commend the current Minster of Women and Children’s Affairs, Madam Akua, for being instrumental in the demolishing of the popular Soldier Bar brothel. I salute you. Please move beyond the NDC rhetoric and champion the cause of women and children in a non-partisan manner, and be always guided by the words of the late Dr. Kwegyir Aggrey, an educationist who did not mince words, when he said that, when you educate a man you have educated an individual, but when you educate a women you have educated a nation. Credit: Abdulai Abdul-Rahman, Executive Secretary of Security and Dialogue-Ghana. 0246605449-prof20202000@yahoo.co.uk