The call by members of Parliament for the protection and safety of journalists to mark this year’s International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Thursday.
The Graphic reports that members of Parliament yesterday called for the protection and safety of journalists to mark this year’s International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.
The day is set aside to draw attention to crimes against journalists, which remains high globally.
The common thread that run through the presentations made by MPs was the need to help end the crimes perpetrated against journalists in the line of duty.
The members were contributing to a statement made by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Manhyia North, Akwasi Konadu, to mark the day.
Mr Konadu whose statement focused on the killing of investigative journalist, Ahmed H. Suale, said the increase in the killing of journalists globally was alarming and endangered free speech and expression.
He called for intensive action to protect journalists and enhance their welfare.
Contributing to the statement, the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, called for the regulation of the content of social media to sanitise the media space.
He said social media was the source of lots of misinformation and needed to be regulated.
The newspaper says that the German Ambassador to Ghana, Daniel Krull, has urged Ghana to use its Presidency of the United Nations Security Council to promote human rights and also help bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
An end to the war in Ukraine, he said, would be a big push for the global economic recovery efforts and also help Ghana to resolve its current economic challenges.
He said the war in Ukraine was having a negative impact on all countries, a situation which had ravaged economies and continue to reduce economic gains after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The best programme for economic recovery for Ghana is to convince Mr Putin to stop his terrible war and send Russian troops home. This will not only be a big push for Ghana’s economy, but for the global economy,” he said.
He lauded Ghana for taking a clear stance to voice out against the war in Ukraine and also standing up for human rights as part of its membership of the UN Security Council.
Mr Krull was speaking at an event in Accra today to assess Ghana’s human rights record in preparation for the review of the country’s human rights under the UN Universal Periodic Review (UN UPR) mechanism in 2023.
It was organised by the POS Foundation, a civil society organisation (CSO), with support from the UN Ghana Office and the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) and was on the theme, “Diplomacy Meets Human Rights on Ghana’s Record; UPR is a Process, Not an Event”.
The event brought together CSOs working on human rights, institutions that promote human rights and policy makers to assess human rights in the country as a precursor to the assessment of the country’s human rights under the UN UPR mechanism.
The Ghanaian Times reports that the Director General of Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC), Dr Kyeremeh Atuahene, says the commission was revamping its partnerships and resource mobilisation initiatives to ensure sufficient and predictable resources for national response.
He said the efforts at strengthening coordination were in recognition of the sad reality that Ghanaians had become overly complacent in so far as HIV was concerned.
The global theme for this year’s world aids day commemoration is “Equaliser” however in line with the commission’s 20th anniversary, it has adopted “Twenty years of multi-sectoral response to HIV and AIDS in Ghana: Accelerating progress to end AIDS” as the National theme.
Dr Atuahene said the theme provided a firm basis for all stakeholders in the HIV and AIDS response to deeply reflect on the progress made through their collective efforts and strategise to achieve the national ‘Elimination Agenda‘.
He explained that, while high-risk behaviours had become increasingly pervasive in the Ghanaian society, prevention protocols were least respected by individual Ghanaians.
“These behaviours have sustained high number of new infections averaging 21,000 annually over the last five years,” he emphasised.
Dr Atuahene said adolescent girls and young women accounted for 20 per cent of total new infections that occurred in 2021 alone.
“We urgently need to arrest this situation of high number of new infections. It is up to every person to take responsibility for protecting him or herself from HIV infection by adopting protective behaviours such as partner reduction, correct and consistent use of condoms and testing for HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs).
The newspaper says that some Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) yesterday increased the prices of petroleum products at the pumps from this morning as predicted by the Institute for Energy Security (IES) last week.
Petrol and diesel prices are going for an average of GH¢18 and GH¢23 per litre, from the previous prices of GH¢15 and GH¢19 per litre respectively.
They attributed the significant increase in the price of fuel to the sharp depreciation of the cedi over the past two weeks.
Presently, the price of crude oil on the world market is relatively stable, selling at $94 per barrel.
But the price of fuel has gone up by more than 100 per cent since the beginning of the year. Petrol and diesel sold at about GH¢7.5 per litre at the beginning of 2022.
IES had earlier stated that petrol and diesel prices were expected to go up further to GH¢18 and GH¢20 per litre by the middle of November 2022.
It also projected a further increase in the price of Liquefied Petroleum Gas despite a 1.43 per cent fall in the commodity on the world market.
Fuel prices went up twice in the month of October 2022, as some Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) are selling petrol at GH¢16.94, whilst diesel is going for GH¢18.76.
GIK/APA