Ghana
Campaigns and Advocacy
27 January 2010
Apart from raising awareness, the march will highlight the need for a thorough revision of draft bill to ensure that it complies with international best practice standards.
From the Communiqué
17 November 2004
Researching Ghana's laws pertaining to media and freedom of expression should now be easier thanks to a new reference guide published by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). The IFEX member has just launched "Legislation on Media, Speech and Expression in Ghana: A Source Book."
26 June 2001
Ghana has begun the process to remove criminal libel from its statute books, report the West African Journalists Association (WAJA) and ARTICLE 19. The bill that would repeal the law on seditious libel was published in the official gazette on 8 June, according to WAJA. The bill must still go through three readings in parliament before becoming law. Repeal of the criminal libel law was a campaign promise of the new government, elected in December 2000. The former government used the law on several occasions to harass journalists, notes WAJA.
8 February 2000
On 3 February, Kabral Blay-Amihere, president of the West African Journalists Association (WAJA), executive member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and editor of "The Independent", was summoned to the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police on possible charges of sedition, reports WAJA and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The investigation was related to an editorial that Blay-Amihere wrote and published in "The Independent" on 11 January about the military. The article urged the public to boycott "the traditional 31 December military parade, describing it as a relic from the days when the army controlled all state agencies and affairs in Ghana," says CPJ. WAJA reports that "under Ghana's Criminal Code of 1960, any person found guilty of sedition faces a minimum prison sentence of five years." Blay-Amihere was released after several hours of interrogation.