PROJECT TO BENEFIT 20 TRADITIONAL AREAS (MIRROR, PAGE 34, JUNE 5, 2010)

From Joe Okyere, Nyankumasi Ahenkro

Twenty traditional areas throughout the country have been selected for the first phase of validation workshops on Ascertainment and Codification of Customary Law Project (ACLP).
Under the project, two traditional areas each from the regions are benefiting from the workshop to validate responses gathered in the traditional area during a field research conducted between June and July 2009.
A team of researchers conducted interviews with paramount chiefs, divisional chiefs, female traditional leaders, indigenous and settler farmers as well as people with disability, land-related institutional heads and other local informants, within the period indicated above.
The ACLP is a joint research project established by the National House of Chiefs and the Law reform Commission with support from the German Development Co-operation (GTZ).
Speaking to the press during one of the workshops for chiefs from the Assin Atandanso Traditional Area at Nyankumasi Ahenkro in the Assin South District, the Executive Secretary of the ACLP, Mrs. Sheilla Minkah-Premo, said two traditional areas each from the regions were selected for the first phase of the project and that 1600 traditional areas would benefit later.
Mrs. Minkah-Premo said the workshop is the 10th in the series and that the Eguafo Traditional area in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem Municipality is the other beneficiary from the Central Region.
The purpose of ACLP is the ascertainment and codification of the customary law rules and practices on land and family in the country.
She said it was obvious that even though customary law was an important source of law in Ghana, what constitutes customary law in a particular community was not always clear.
She said the impact of this uncertainty was most prominent and evident in two areas of law which affected the most significant facets of national life in the country; family law and land law.
She said the final output of the project would make use of land and family law certain and thus would assist in the settlement of disputes and bring more transparency in land transactions which would aid development.
The Executive Secretary said land transactions in Ghana are beset with conflicts between the customary practices, rules and norms on the one hand, and the formal and statutory law on the other.
Customary lands, which include lands owned by stools, skins, clans, families, tendamba, etc form a significant percentage of all lands in Ghana and that this state of affairs reinforces the need for the ascertainment and codification of customary law rules applicable to particular communities in the country.
According to her the project represents the very first initiative taken towards the fulfilment of the constitutional mandate given to the National House of Chiefs to undertake the progressive study, interpretation and codification of customary law with a view to evolving, in appropriate cases, a unified system of rules of customary law in Article 272(b) of the !992 Constitution.
The Law Reform Commission, a key partner in the project, also has the statutory mandate to promote law reform in Ghana and review all the laws, both statutory and otherwise, with a view to facilitate its systematic development and reform.
A Director of Research, Ministry of Chieftaincy and Culture and a member of JSC who is also the representative of the National House of Chiefs, Dr. H.S. Daannaa, who spoke at the function, called for reconciliation between state law and taboos.
Dr. Daannaa commended the chiefs for their enthusiasm in the workshop since it would help in land acquisition, marriage, among others, and assist in solving most of the associated problems and contribute to development.