The Seventh-Day Adventist Church has petitioned government over what leadership describes as wanton abuse of women in Ghana.

 The church wants the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Protection to draw attention and spearhead strengthening of laws to end the practice.

 Over 4,000 women from 22 countries in West and Central Africa signed the petition at the Women’s Ministries Conference in Kumasi.

 The petitioners say abuse and domestic violence against women are on the ascendency.

 According to them, 35% of women in 80 countries worldwide, including Ghana suffered either physical or sexual violence in 2014 alone.

 They also identified health threats, illiteracy, poverty and lack of training as well as women’s workload as some of the critical issues affecting them worldwide.

“United Nations statistics shows that one in every three women around the world will experience abuse sometime in her life. One in three women seated here will experience abuse sometime in her life and so we launched the “End it Now” campaign to bring this issue of abuse to the attention of every member of our church and to people in our communities,” says Heather-Dawn Small, Director of General Conference Women’s Ministries of the  Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

The Seventh-Day Adventist Church has launched a campaign dubbed, “End It Now” to fight, especially, abuse of household workers.

Heather-Dawn Small says a lot has been done since 2001 to draw the world’s attention to the abuse of women through public education.

“We have marched in the streets of our communities and we have given out literature to educate people about abuse.

We have collected signatures of people who  are against abuse and even right now, in Ghana, we are collecting signatures  to give to government to ask for more laws to help women and girls.”

Women from the church’s West-Central Division in 22 countries have been meeting at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in  Kumasi for the six-day conference, under the theme, “Saved to Serve”. 

Omobonike Sessou is Director of West-Central African Division Women’s Ministries.

She wants greater attention focused on improving the living standards of women.

“We want to equip women. We want to equip women so that they would get the necessary training and skills needed to build their homes so that they would be agents of change. Don’t forget that women have great responsibility of raising children and these are children who would become citizens of or country tomorrow. So if the country is going  to have good citizens, it depends on the training the women are given to their children.”