August / September 2013
Accra, Ghana – The NGO WIPSEN-Africa organised two separate consultative meetings onMainstreaming Gender in the Security Sector with the Ghana Prison Service and the Ghana Immigration Service in Accra, Ghana on 30 August and 10 September, 2013, respectively. Senior ranking officers and female security personnel from the Ghana Prison Service and Immigration Service took part in the consultative meetings.
WIPSEN-Africa is currently carrying out a two-year project to enhance gender mainstreaming and gender responsiveness within the Ghana Prison Service, Police Service, Immigration Service and Armed Forces, with funding support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
As part of this project, WIPSEN-Africa has been working on a survey of gender sensitivity within each institution.
In order to better achieve the project aims, WIPSEN-Africa developed joint strategies with the four security sector institutions to help enhance gender mainstreaming within each institution. As a starting point, WIPSEN-Africa has so far held consultative meetings with members of the Ghana Prison Service and Immigration Service. The two consultative meetings provided an opportunity for WIPSEN-Africa to hear from the institutions about the gender mainstreaming efforts that they have so far implemented, and also to discuss the existing gaps in terms of gender mainstreaming on both the policy and procedural levels. The objectives of the consultative meetings were to:
1. Develop a common understanding of the gender mainstreaming efforts and gaps within the security sector institutions;
2. Convey the key findings of the survey on gender sensitivity to the heads of the institutions; and
3. To attain commitment from the institutions to support WIPSEN-Africa activities for the implementation of the project.
The meeting with the Prison Service was attended by 12 senior ranking officials and female security personnel, while the one with the Immigration Service had 13 senior ranking officials and female security personnel.
Both meetings saw participants discuss the current efforts and challenges in mainstreaming gender in their respective institutions. WIPSEN-Africa provided them with a summary of the preliminary findings of the survey on gender sensitivity within the Prison and Immigration Services. Both meetings provided a useful opportunity for WIPSEN-Africa to gain a deeper understanding of the levels of gender sensitivity within the Ghana Security Sector through discussions around issues such as recruitment, women’s representation and promotions, training, assignments, infrastructure, maternity and paternity, occupational benefits and marriage policy.
This will allow WIPSEN-Africa to ensure that their future project activities are tailored to the needs and aspirations of women and men within the security sector. This information, and the feedback participants provided on the draft surveys will significantly strengthen the quality of the survey results.
WIPSEN-Africa and the Service personnel in each meeting also discussed how collaboration between the institutions could be pursued and made commitments for taking this collaboration forward, including to share information and formalise the relationship through an MOU. These meetings were an important first step in building the collaborative relationship needed for the institutions to work together to enhance gender mainstreaming within the Ghana security sector.
