Principles and Practices of Dispute Resolution in Ghana: Ewe and Akan Procedures on Females' Inheritance and Property Rights

The thesis analyzes core elements of variant dispute resolution procedures in chiefs' courts, and substantive laws among the Anlo and the Asante of Ghana. It delimits itself to studying dispute resolution procedures and proceedings on female's property institutions (including substantive laws), which infringe on women's inheritance and property rights in spite of legislative interventions to remedy the situation.
The research is necessitated by current inundation of the formal court in Ghana with cases. In the national and international discourses it has become clear that the formal sector alone cannot handle the enormous volumes of cases. Even though chiefs'courts in Ghana help to some extent in decongesting cases in the formal courts, it is alleged they are gender biased, for example in their panel representation of legal decision-makers, and that not only procedures but also their court norms or principles are gender discriminatory. This calls into question whether indigenous institutions can play any meaningful role in the attainment of gender equality as propounded by the international regimes such as Protocols to both the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (African Charter) and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
The approach of the research is that of an anthropological qualitative case study. The study involved secondary and primary data with (participatory) observation, and explanations of indigenous proverbs and metaphors, which encapsulate how women are socially imaged by both the patrilineal and matrilineal family systems and how this social image defines their position in society in terms of their inheritance and property rights. The primary data are obtained from fieldwork in Anloga and Kumasi, both in the Volta and the Ashanti regions of Ghana.
The findings of the research are that in spite of governments' legislative interventions, indigenous principles and socio-cultural practices of the research units continue to a large extent to determine intestate inheritance. In addition, when it comes to inheriting a man's property, women have fewer rights than men. My thesis is that negative social image of women is the cause of women's social and economic subordination to men in kinship structures in Ghana. Kinship or family structures, the domain of legal and socio-cultural practices of the Anlo and the Asante, often treat women differently from men in social and in economic relations. It follows that appreciation of the above, together with other cultural practices in the social universe of the two groups of people need to be considered in the reform of intestate succession law in Ghana.
The study uses the basic principles of the Protocols to the the African Charter and the CEDAW on women's inheritance rights as the assessment criteria. The research is significant because, inter alia, it contributes towards the strengthening of procedures in chiefs' courts, and in the reform of indigenous principles that are gender discriminatory. This may lead to a more credible and acceptable dispute settlement in chiefs' courts. This may reduce the congestion of cases in the formal courts in Ghana. Finally, the findings of the research, among other things, contribute to anthropological discourses on indigenous law and dispute resolution generally, and particularly in Ghana.