NEW YORK– GroundReport is set to cover the progress of an ambitious project aimed at improving the Ghanaian legal system this winter.
In January, Fordham University students Michael Lynch, Jonathan Knight, and Christina Glynn will travel to the rural region of Sunyani in Ghana acting as liasons for Project Reconciliation Ghana. They will facilitate a seminar for 30 students of the Catholic University of Ghana on dispute resolution techniques in affiliation with the Giving to Ghana Foundation.
"This is making first contact with future mediators," says Lynch "we are going to be meeting the students for the first time and giving them a look at different methods of arbitration."
The Ghanaian students will then travel to New York during summer 2008 to be trained in arbitration techniques of the International Centre for Dispute Resolution.
Knight stresses the need for this type of intervention, "lawyers in Ghana are costly and are not readily available to help solve disputes in poor rural areas…dispute resolution is a viable alternative to help those who are left out."
Once settled by tribal processes, small land disputes are not adequately addressed by the Ghanaian legal system, often due to the high cost of lawyers. Consequently, the most impoverished are the most vulnerable.
In Sunyani, the students will be viewing a live broadcast of a mock arbitration via GroundReport, and will be able to interact with the arbitrators to ask questions as well. The goal is to establish a back and forth between lawyers and students in order to introduce the arbitration techniques.
Ultimately, Project Reconciliation Ghana is seeking to help aleviate the various problems in the Ghanaian legal system and provide functional, transparent and affordable alternative dispute resolution.
Check back with GroundReport for continuing coverage.