Security awareness in border communities has improved — CDD Report

A report by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has indicated that the level of security awareness among residents of border communities has improved in the last three months.

The CDD-Ghana under the “Enhancing Citizens Participation in Border Security” project, monitored border security and the engagement between security agencies and residents in border communities between October and December 2021. 

A total of 85 local volunteers were deployed to 44 selected border districts across 10 out of 16 regions of Ghana to monitor the security situation in the targeted border communities for three months. 

The volunteers monitored 369 border communities within the reporting period. 

The findings of the report, the second to be released as part of the project, were disseminated at a media briefing at the CDD’s Head Office in Accra on Monday, January 31, 2022.

 

The report said most communities monitored (68 per cent) rated their security awareness level as either “excellent,” “very good,” or “good” compared to the 48 per cent awareness rate recorded in the first report. 

Also, 65 out of the 369 communities monitored (18 per cent) rated the awareness of border residents on security as “fair” depicting an improvement in security awareness from 28 per cent in the first report, it said.

 

Dr Paul Nana Kwabena Aborampah Mensah, Programmes Manager, CDD-Ghana, attributed the improvement in awareness rate to the sensitisation programmes that were conducted by its volunteers as part of the project.

 

He said the volunteers facilitated radio and community sensitisation programmes, which had enhanced the knowledge of residents in border communities on cross border crimes and external security threats. 

“Within the reporting period, the volunteers conducted 267 community sensitisation programmes...the findings suggest that out of the 369 communities monitored, 53 (14 per cent) of the communities were rated very poor or poor.” 

“The improvement we are seeing is as a result of the sensitisation programmes conducted by our volunteers,” Mr Mensah said. 

The report also found that the current security situation in eight out of ten communities monitored was “generally good.” 

However, in 41 (11 per cent) of the communities monitored in the Bono, Oti, Upper East, Western North, Savannah, Northern, Volta, Western, and Upper West regions, the volunteers rated the current security situation as “poor” or “very poor”. 

“Our volunteers found that human rights abuses in border communities remain very low. They indicated that close to nine out of ten communities monitored recorded no such incidents,” Mr Mensah said.

 

Mr Mawusi Yaw Dumenu, Senior Programmes Officer, CDD-Ghana, said the objective of the exercise was to enhance the security awareness of citizens along and across border communities as a proactive step in contributing to strengthening Ghana’s border security. 

He said the involvement of residents in border security had become essential in the wake of surging cross-border crimes and external security threats, particularly violent extremism, and terrorism in West Africa. 

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