Betty — first female Attorney-General and Minister of Justice

Daily Graphic, Pg. 11. Sat. Feb. 28, 2009

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

IN his maiden State of the Nation Address to Parliament recently, President J.E.A. Mills recognised the position of Ghana’s first female Speaker of Parliament, Mrs Joyce Adeline Bamford-Addo, and said she occupied a unique position in the nation’s history.
The President indicated that the position of the Speaker exemplified the fulfilment of his wish to see Ghanaian women rise to assume even more prominent positions in the country.
Currently, Ghana also boasts of the first woman acting Inspector-General of Police (IGP) in the person of Mrs Elizabeth Mills-Robertson.
Coming after these was the swearing in of the first woman Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in the country’s history.
Mrs Betty Mould-Iddrisu is one of the eight women ministers who have been vetted and approved by Parliament.
The NDC manifesto contains a clear commitment to women empowerment and in that document the party promised, among other things, that 40 per cent of its ministers would be women.
When she took her turn to answer questions before the Parliamentary Appointments Committee in Accra, Mrs Mould-Iddrisu touched on a number of critical issues, including obnoxious cultural practices that affected the rights of women.
Exhibiting a lot of eloquence and comportment, the then presidential nominee, who was sworn in on Thursday by the President, expressed her views on criminalising harmful traditional practices.
She said that was not the only solution to ending such practices as trokosi, female genital mutilation (FGM) and witch camps.
She said the target should be on advocacy and education to enlighten the people on the need to desist from such negative practices.
Citing Malawi as an example, she said it was a criminal act to call someone a witch in that country, saying that putting in place regulations or bye-laws, backed by public education, could also take care of such issues in the country.
She said with education and advocacy, perpetrators would respond favourably to ending the practice, saying that “shrine keepers are becoming eager to release their victims”.
Mrs Mould-Iddrisu is the immediate past Director of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat in the United Kingdom.
She is on record to have, in the 1990s, chaired both the Ghanaian and African Regional groupings of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) and co-founded the African Women Lawyers Association (AWLA) in 1999 and chaired it till 2003.
She said she believed in Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), saying that the focus should shift to community dispute resolution which normally dealt with cultural and traditional issues which, according to her, most often favoured women, children, the disadvantaged and the poor in society.
She said the shift would help give more women access to justice, adding that women formed a majority of the population and, therefore, they should be given equal access to the law, saying that “women issues are dear to my heart”.
Her interest in the empowerment of women led her to champion the initiation of Ghana’s first Legal Aid Offices in 1985 which spearheaded the empowerment of Ghanaian and other African women through grass-root programmes for the sensitisation of women and children in the areas of access to justice, judicial reforms and dispute resolution.
Mrs Mould-Iddrisu worked in several capacities at the Ministry of Justice from 1978 till 2003, rising to the rank of Chief State Attorney.
She has worked on several national and regional legal issues on behalf of the country globally, including issues on human rights and the rights of women and children, trafficking of persons in the ECOWAS sub-region and international humanitarian law.
Her remarks at the swearing-in ceremony that her appointment to the ministerial position was an honour to Ghanaian women, who formed the majority, and her promise to ensure the rule of law, separation of powers, access to justice and independence amply demonstrate her commitment to the advancement of the rights of vulnerable groups.
Expressing optimism and confidence in the minister to perform her role, the President was reported to have said that she had the qualities to deliver and emphasised that what the government wanted was “best and highest standards” in the administration of justice for the country.