Let’s collaborate to deal with cross-border crimes – CJ to ECOWAS

Ghana’s Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo is calling for dialogue among member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on the most effective ways to deal with cross border-crimes.

According to the leader of Ghana’s judiciary the idea of free movement of people, goods and services as being facilitated by the regional Bloc has resulted to the emerging trend of criminals who in her words keep “hopping” between neighbouring countries to avert justice by taking advantage of the non-uniformity of criminal laws of the West African countries.

The Chief Justice made the revelations when she took her turn to address a gathering at the opening ceremony of the 2019 international conference of the ECOWAS court on Monday, 21 October 2019 in Accra.

“And what is happening now is that because of free movement of people, it is also resulting to free movement for criminals. A crime in one country is not necessarily a crime in another country and because historical, there has never really been uniform criminal laws among the member states or states in general except the internationally accepted crimes against humanity, it is sometimes rather difficult to effectively deal with the current type of criminals who have a lot of savvy and know how to keep hopping from country to country and end up enjoying impunity when we have problems such as human trafficking, arms trafficking, money laundering and so on and so on forth, and it’s about time that the judiciaries of the region get together to hold dialogue to ensure that we play our part,” she said.

Meanwhile, the government of Ghana has challenged members states and all community institutions including the ECOWAS court to play their roles to facilitate the process of integration towards the establishment of an Economic Union in West Africa.

Delivering a speech at the opening event Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey explained that as a principal organ, the ECOWAS court has critical role to play in driving the ECOWAS agenda.

“The court must effectively discharge its mandate consistent with the revised ECOWAS treaty and supplementary protocol of 2005. There is a need for a strong regional mechanism to resolve disputes relating to the integration process including matters relating to the ECOWAS trade liberalisation scheme” Ms Botchwey said.

Source: classfmonline.com