Advocates Redesign

Category: Cases/PILIWA Members

  • PRESS RELEASE: Zogota Massacre Victims In Paris For Justice

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    Survivors of the 2012 massacre by state security forces in the village of Zogota in the West African country of Guinea are asking the Tribunal Judiciaire in Paris, France, to ensure that justice is finally served in their lawsuit against the Guinean state. The massacre survivors are supported by three non-governmental organizations: Guinean human rights defense organization Les Mêmes Droits pour Tous (MDT); Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA), based in Ghana; and the French corporate accountability and anti-corruption organization Sherpa.

     

    PRESS RELEASE

    Factsheet on Zogota

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  • Press Release – ACA Partners Ghana Government to Accelerate Development in 100 Communities

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    Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA) has launched a massive expansion of its community-driven development (CDD) work to one hundred communities in Ghana.  The project will put communities threatened by extractive development in control of their own development and give them the tools to advocate for their own vision of the future.

    ACA’s community-driven development programs revolve around two key elements.  The first element, the Facilitated Collective Action Process (FCAP), is a process that was developed and popularized in East Africa by ACA’s partner organization, Spark MicroGrants.  FCAP is a two-year program that encourages communities to create a common development vision and equips them with skills and financial resources – including a USD 9,000 microgrant – to pursue it.

     

    Read More….

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  • 10 years on, Zoghota Massacre survivors still struggle to get justice

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    Survivors of an August 2012 attack against the village of Zoghota, Guinea by state security forces organized a press conference  last month on the 10-year anniversary of the attack to demand that the Republic of Guinea comply with an order issued by the ECOWAS Court of Justice in Abuja in 2020 to pay 4.56 billion Guinean francs (then approximately 436,000 U.S. dollars) to victims of the attack and their families.

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    Frédéric Loua, a lawyer at the Guinean human rights organization Les Mêmes Droits pour Tous (MDT) spoke representing the community at the conference saying, “the victims of the Zoghota massacre ask the Guinean state to immediately and without delay pay the amount of the sentence pronounced by the ECOWAS Court of Justice and to have those presumed responsible for the massacre judged for individual criminal responsibility.” The Zoghota people used this opportunity to renew their resolve to pursue all avenues in Guinea and internationally to hold their government accountable for the massacre.

    The order came as a result of a court case filed in 2018, after the community’s cases were repeatedly stalled and ignored in Guinean courts.

    Loua, pictured above at the press conference, has accompanied the people of Zoghota since the day of the attack. On Loua’s first visit to Zoghota on August 1, 2012, homes were still smoldering from fires the attackers had set only hours before. At that time the village of Zoghota in southeastern Guinea bordered an iron ore exploration site controlled by VBG, a mining company owned by Brazilian mining giant Vale and BSG Resources. Conflicts had arisen between the company and community over mining activities causing environmental damage, unfulfilled promises to employ local youth, and alleged mismanagement of VBG’s royalty payments intended for community development. The local communities also reported that they did not give the free and informed consent before the company set itself up in the area.

     

    Around 1:00 AM on August 4, 2012 – the night before the government was to meet with the community to discuss these conflicts – state security forces attacked Zoghota, firing bullets and tear gas. Five villagers were killed that night and a sixth later died of his injuries. More than a dozen villagers were arrested, some of whom were tortured by gendarmes. Homes and other buildings were torched, and almost the entire village fled. 

     

    One month later, Loua and MDT supported the community to file the first in a series of lawsuits against the individual police, gendarme, and military officers accused of carrying out the attack and their accomplice VBG, accused of supplying materials used in the attack.

     

    These cases have since been shuffled between Guinea’s civilian and military courts, languishing for years while the courts have allowed witnesses and defendants to ignore or flee from subpoenas, much to the dismay of Zoghota survivors and their lawyers. “After all that we had done, there was no justice. The state had no will to shine a light on what had happened,” Loua said.

     

    Faced with national court systems unwilling or unable to deliver justice to the victims, the community turned to the ECOWAS Court of Justice in 2018 to hold the Republic of Guinea responsible for the massacre, torture, and illegal detention of the people of Zoghota.

     

    In November 2020, the Court ruled the Republic of Guinea was responsible for violating the Zoghota villagers’ rights to life; to be free of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; to not be subject to arbitrary arrest or detention; and to an effective remedy. A year after the Court had ordered Guinea to pay compensation to the victims, the Zoghota community appealed to the ECOWAS Commission to enforce the ruling.

    While Guinea’s government continues to ignore the ECOWAS ruling despite several meetings and advocacy, the people of Zoghota are tired of waiting for justice. Stymied at the state level, the community is ready to once again turn to international legal systems to enforce the ECOWAS ruling.

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  • NGO supports development in Fanteakwa

    Published by the Daily Times

    Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA), a non-profit making organisation, is spearheading the implementation of Facilitated Collective Action Process (FCAP) in all the 34 key towns in the Fanteakwa South district as part of efforts to deeply involve communities in the planning and execution of development projects.

    In partnership with the Fanteakwa South District Assembly, FCAP is being implemented as a community driven development tool that keeps decision-making and community development in the hands of the local community members.

    It was adopted by ACA from ‘Spark Micro-grants’, a partner NGO in East Africa (Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo), and is currently the development pattern used by the Rwandan government to develop the country.

    FCAP takes a maximum of three years in each partner community to fully implement a project, and has three main phases, namely planning, implementation and post-implementation.

    Pilot cases

    For over a year now, ACA been piloting this process in two communities in the Fanteakwa South district, namely Juaso and Nsuapemso, in partnership with the Assembly.

    Following the success of the application of FCAP in these areas, ACA has extended its coverage to all 34 communities of the district on a 60-40 percent deal. ACA will provide 60% of micro grant, which is the cedi equivalent of $9,000.00, in all 34 communities of the district while the district Assembly takes up the remaining 40%.

    Launching the FCAP at a town hall meeting held recently at Osino, the district capital, the Community Development Manager of ACA responsible for West Africa, Nana Ama Nketia Quaidoo, said it was extremely important for intended beneficiaries of every development project to be deeply involved from the scratch rather than just putting up the project for them.

    “If you have any intent of executing any development for me, engage me and let me determine what I want. So, you don’t just wake up and decide that you want to build a hospital, or school or a chapel when I, the intended user/beneficiary, don’t know anything about it,” she explained.

    “How did you know that I need a chapel? What makes you think that the location of the market is at the preferred place? These are some of the issues that hinder effective local governance in Ghana and Africa,” she again said.

    Madam Nketia Quaidoo observed that successive governments sometimes tout their achievements by mentioning a lot of infrastructural projects executed without knowing that the supposed beneficiaries do not seem to resonate with these projects because they were not involved in their implementation.

    This, she further explained, informed ACA’s decision to adopt the Facilitated Collective Action Process, which deeply involves the people in the planning and execution of any project in their community and avoids white elephant projects.

    She expressed the hope that FCAP will help drive community-driven approach in project implementation while reducing the impacts of mining on the local people.

    Read about Advocates for Alternatives on the News via https://dailystatesman.com.gh/ngo-supports-development-in-fanteakwa/


  • PILIWA Annual Conference 2022

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    The Public Interest Lawyering Initiative for West Africa (PILIWA) is a professional network of West African lawyers, legal practitioners, and other advocates who use law to promote social justice.  We share a commitment to using the law to protect the rights of vulnerable individuals and communities and enhancing their ability to shape their own economic future.  We are spearheading the transformation of the legal profession in West Africa to ensure that lawyers work in the public interest rather than just in the interest of the powerful few.

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    To achieve its mission, PILIWA has among other things established an annual conference to allow the members of the network to meet, share experiences and develop new legal and socio-political strategies to better promote and defend the rights of communities and ensure social justice in West Africa.

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    The annual conference is a space for communication and development of strategies to strengthen the network. PILIWA members meet once a year in one of PILIWA’s member countries. It allows members of the network to discuss the cases they are working on, the progress made and the challenges encountered. This allows members to share their knowledge and experiences, reflect together on how to address challenges and more clearly identify opportunities for collaboration.

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    The conference offers members of the network trainings on various human rights themes which allow them to learn different theories of change and different approaches to advocacy and strategic litigation. These trainings not only reinforce their passion for social justice but also sharpen their expertise on issues of environmental rights, land grabbing and all related rights, corporate due diligence standards, resettlement standards, mining standards, strategic litigation etc.

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    Network members use the conference to also propose appropriate strategies for the future of the network. To this end, one of the successes that has emerged from the conferences is the collaboration around a legal strategy to create systemic change in West African human rights jurisprudence. This nine-country strategy consists of filing cases both internationally at the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice and also domestically before national courts to highlight the mismanagement and responsibility of States in relation to mining operations. The aim is not only to seek justice and compensation for communities affected by human rights violations caused by the extractive industries, but also to encourage ECOWAS to examine closely the degree of compliance of its countries members in respect of their obligations under international law.

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    Additionally, it is hoped that these efforts will help to change national and regional policies to prioritize the interests of West African communities that suffer violations and abuses committed by multinationals. The lawyers of the network, French and English speakers, collaborate together on their respective cases and complaints filed at the level of the ECOWAS Court of Justice.

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    From these annual meetings, the idea of making PILIWA an institutional and independent entity was also born, with its own constitution and operating structures with a view to ensuring effective participation and collective ownership by the members. From this institutionalization of PILIWA, was also born the idea of creating a national PILIWA chapter in each country in order to increase its actions  and impact.

    [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.6.6″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]To this end, a document stating the vision, missions, principles, theory of change of PILIWA was developed and unanimously approved at the 5th annual conference held in Abidjan in February 2022. During this meeting, the members of the network conducted as assessment of the successes of PILIWA over the past 5 years as well as its setbacks and also developed a country-specific strategic plan that will dovetail into a broader strategic plan for the PILIWA network. This strategic plan document will make it possible to better direct PILIWA’s efforts, coordinate its actions, and increase the visibility and impacts of the network. Another topic that was discussed during this meeting was the enforcement of the decisions of the ECOWAS Court of Justice by ECOWAS member countries. Indeed, members of the PILIWA network discussed the challenges faced in enforcing these judgments in favor of communities.  Considering the unwillingness of ECOWAS Member States to execute judgments, strategies for using regional and international mechanisms to force the enforcement of judgments were the subject of intense and interesting discussions at this meeting.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.6.6″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

    In conclusion, the annual PILIWA conference allowed the network to grow in terms of membership, expertise, strategy etc.

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  • ACA rewards community members

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    In recognition of their exemplary roles in championing development in their communities and also serving as role models to others, four individuals have been awarded by the Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA) as part the maiden annual national delegates’ conference of the Citizens Committee Network (CiCoNet), which took place at Osino in Fanteakwa South District of the Eastern Region.

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    George Asante of Juaso emerged as the Over-all Best Community Member as a result of his dedication, tolerance and consistency in mobilizing support for Juaso community members, especially with regards to FCAP meetings.

    Although he is from Juaso, Mr. Asante has been extending his support to other FCAP communities such as Nsuapemso and Segyimase, especially when those communities are confronted with challenges.

    He offers the necessary assistance without asking for any honorarium in return.

    As an FCAP Chairperson, he has worked hard to increase attendance and participation of women in meetings and more importantly during decision-making in his community.

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    Another resident of Juaso, Lydia Opokuaa, received the Most Inspiring Community Member award. She is a self-motivated female whose phenomenal interest and contributions in decision-making in her community cannot be over-emphasized.

    Madam Opokuaa Lydia fully attends FCAP meetings every week and participates in all activities for the development of her community.

    In her view, activities of the FCAP and CICONET are both geared towards her own community development. She also considers ACA’s methodologies to be non-discriminatory, giving everyone the opportunity to speak.

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    According to her, the FCAP methodology has helped her to believe that disability is not inability. Madam Lydia has a stammer – a speech impediment that could otherwise discourage her from participating – but the FCA encourages her to get involved in decision making and contribute to the success of her community’s development in the long-term. She therefore entreats other community members with similar speech difficulties to learn from her and be encouraged as well.

    Emmanuel Antwi of Nwoase community in Nkoranza South Municipality of the Bono East Region and Rose Addo of Nsuapemso community in the Eastern Region were also recognized as the Most Dependable Community Members.

    Hon. Edward Kuyiweh of Salamkrom won the Most Disciplined Community Member award, while the Over-all Best Community award went to Segyimase. Records show that Segyimase community has the full participation of its chief in all FCAP meetings, with members being punctual and well-organized.

    All the award winners received Certificates of Recognition.

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  • ACA partner communities embrace brafie “come home” initiative to promote community-driven development and resilience

    For the past five years, ACA has been working with communities in Ghana’s Bono East and Eastern Regions to help them realize their own development vision while avoiding the economic and social ills associated with unsustainable mining practices.  While ACA’s projects usually center around a micro-grant to each community and the community’s efforts to marshal its own resources, a number of the partner communities have now been turning to a new source of support: their own compatriots in the diaspora.

    Known as Project Brafie (“come home” in the local Twi language), this new initiative encourages communities to strengthen ties with their relations outside of Ghana, inviting them to come home, contribute to the community, and help the community realize its development vision.  So far, ACA partner communities have re-connected with expatriate Ghanaians in Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands, as well as locals who have left the village to live in Accra.

    Donkro Nkwanta

    Donkro Nkwanta, in the Nkoranza South Municipality of Bono East Region has received tremendous feedback from the diaspora through Project Brafie.  ACA has facilitated the community’s initiative to build a community center, and members of the diaspora contributed $4,700 cash towards the construction.

    Encouraged by the success of the ACA project, the people of Donkro Nkwanta have continued to turn to the diaspora for community investment.  So far, expatriate natives of Donkro Nkwanta have built four washrooms for the community clinic, fenced the facility as a safety measure to improve health in the community provided funds to construct a 4-unit classroom block, provided a signpost for the town’s police station and secured 110 bulbs to serve as streetlights for the town to further improve security.

    Juaso

    Juaso, a village in the Fanteakwa South District of Eastern Region, is implementing a black soap manufacturing operation as part of its partnership with ACA.  Through sustainable production that capitalizes on the waste products of the village’s traditional industries – cocoa and plantain growing – they are building resilience to external threats, including the mining companies that threaten their land and livelihoods.

    One element of the black soap project is the construction of a production house.  Through Projet Brafie, the people of Juaso have identified a native of the town who works with GHACEM, a leading cement producer in Ghana.  Discussions are now underway between the community and their native son to draw on GHACEM’s Corporate Social Responsibility program to complete construction of the production house.