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Customary
Law Project gets a permanent secretariat
Accra, July 25, Ghanadot/GNA - Lack of certainty in
customary law and conflicting accounts of customary law
rules, have been found to contribute significantly to the
numerous family, land and chieftaincy disputes.
This state of affairs reinforced the need for the
ascertainment and codification of customary rules in the
country, Professor John Nabila, Co-chairman of the Joint
Steering Committee of the Ascertainment of Customary Law
(ACL) Project said on Thursday.
Speaking at the inauguration of a secretariat for customary
law project in Accra, he said, the project, which was
sponsored by the German Government, would ascertain and
codify all the customary rules and practices on land and
family.
Prof. Nabila noted that the secretariat would serve as a
joint research centre for the two collaborating bodies,
which were the National House of Chief and the Law Reform
Commission.
The project would constitute the first initiative towards
fulfilling an important constitutional mandate given to the
National House of Chiefs.
“This provision requires the National House of Chiefs to
undertake the progressive study, interpretation and
codification of customary with a view to evolving, in
appropriate cases, a unified system of rules of customary
law,” he added.
Prof. Nabila said the Steering Committee had decided that
the project should be carried out first and foremost on a
pilot basis and that 20 traditional areas, with two from
each region, had been selected for the collection of data.
In a speech read on his behalf, Mr Joe Gartey,
Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, said the output
of the project would be a comprehensive report from which a
set of rules on customary law would be extracted with the
assistance of the Drafting Section of the Attorney-General’s
office.
He expressed the government’s appreciation to the German
Development Corporation (GTZ) for funding the project. He
also thanked the outgoing Programme Manager of GTZ, Dr
Mechthild Ruenger, for her personal assistance towards the
project.
GNA
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