GAF advocates for more women to be included in the military

The Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) has embarked on a nationwide schools campaign, sensitizing and encouraging female students in secondary schools and tertiary institutions to join the Combat and Combat Supporting Unit of the GAF upon completion.

“We want to see more women in the fight and an increase in supporting roles in the fight. Over the years, women have been recruited into the GAF, but they are mainly found in the support functions of the services; such as nursing, in the kitchen, in shops and in administrative functions. But there is a need to rebrand women in leadership positions within the GAF.

“Only through the GAF’s combat and combat support unit can women attain leadership roles; the United Nations has found that when it comes to peacekeeping, it is always about maledom,” said Col. Elvis Asamoah, gender advisor at the General Headquarters of International Peace Support Operations.

He said the GAF was now talking to female students, parents, guardians, teachers and the Ghana Education Service as well as the public to understand that it was necessary for them to inspire the female students to join the fighting and combat support units. of the GAF.

“There is no discrimination in the GAF; so this is for men and that for women should be a thing of the past. It is an opportunity for everyone, and women need to open up, as the GAF does not have specific training for men and women, or prohibit roles for men and women.”

Colonel Asamoah raised these concerns while speaking to students at Wa Senior High School as part of a nationwide school campaign tour across the Upper West Region to help promote gender mainstreaming in the military.

The campaign has a slogan: “Join the Combat and the Combat Supporting unit. We have what it takes to conquer the skies, we have what it takes to command the fleets, and we have what it takes to command the troops.

Colonel Asamoah, who heads a three-man team from the GAF and officials from the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center (KAIPTC), is expected to take the campaign to eight secondary and tertiary schools in the region together with the Simon Diedong. Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development and Wa Senior High School are the first beneficiaries.

He urged the school authorities to help motivate the female students to study hard and get good grades so that they could be eligible for admission into the tertiary institutions and join the GAF.

He led the students through the various ranks of the GAF and it became known that the current leadership roles in the GAF were male-dominated, which he said would have changed if women had been in the GAF’s combat and combat support unit.

“We must give the GAF a new leadership role through the active involvement of women in the combat and combat support unit,” he said, while advising students not to pay money for people to join the GAF.

Senior Warrant Officer Logah Patience Abla of the GAF urged the students to stop wasting their time on social media but study hard to get good marks in their examinations to brighten their future.

The Senior Warrant Officer, who is also the Drill Sergeant Major of the Military Academic Training School, advised the female students to desire excellence in everything they did so that the authorities would see the need to empower them.

Mrs. Kissiwaa Gyan, Program Officer of Women Youth, Peace and Security Institute at KAIPKC, took the students through gender and sex, gender equality and equality, and urged the students to focus their thoughts on whatever they were doing to protect their achieve dream goals.

The KAIPTC’s Women Youth, Peace and Security Institute (WYPSI) is implementing the campaign in partnership with the GAF, while the Elsie Initiative Fund of Canada is funding the campaign, in line with the Government of Ghana’s commitment to the Women in peacekeeping operations, a global initiative. efforts to empower women in peacekeeping roles.

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