What We Have Done
LADA Institute has a track record of providing quality training and enhancing the value of public officers in several Ghanaian institutions. The underpinning assets of the LADA Institute, lie in the acquired years of experience working with the highest leadership and policy making individuals and institutions within Ghana and beyond.
2023 - In Progress
The Ghana Road Traffic Act (683) 2004, the Ghana Traffic (Amendment) Act, 2008, and the Ghana Road Traffic Regulation 2012 (L.I.2180), are the main legislative instruments that regulate road safety in Ghana. These instruments cover issues such as dangerous, careless and inconsiderate driving; driving under the influence of alcohol; restriction of carriage of persons; use of crash helmets, seat belts, child restraints and other safety equipment, among other road safety issues.
Although these laws have provisions on the use of seat belts and age-appropriate child restraint equipment, enforcement of these provisions remains a challenge. There is even an inconsistency between Section 14 and 15 of Act 683 and Regulations 119 of L.I. 2180. While Act 683 provides that no child below 5 years should sit in the front of a vehicle, Regulations 119 appears to allow for such provided that the child is in a restraining or safety device. More importantly, these laws seem in-exhaustive to address all the issues of vehicular child safety involving children in Ghana, despite alarming statistics.
It is within this context, that LADA Institute is providing support for the amendment and strengthening of the provisions of the law that have a bearing on child safety in vehicles by (a) undertaking a review of all policies, regulations and laws pertaining to the safety of children in vehicles; (b) consultations with various road safety stakeholders to ascertain feasibility of proposals and garner support to promote and support the legislation through parliament; (c) advocacy and media campaign to increase awareness of the need to ensure safety for child passengers.
2022
LADA Institute facilitated a three (3) day Capacity Building workshop for the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS).
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The Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS) is the leading institution for research and advanced studies of law in Nigeria. NIALS, with support from the McArthur Foundation, is implementing a Justice Sector Administration Reform Project. To ensure that the project is being implemented with best practice project management skills, NIALS sought the services of LADA Institute to facilitate a capacity building workshop for an 8-member project team on:
1. Best practices and guiding principles for Project Management: - coordination, roles & responsibilities, risk identification and management;
2. Best practices and guiding principles for resource mobilisation and strategies for enhancing donor partnerships and managing donor relations;
3. Project Accounting: - Principles and Standards, Compliance and Best Practices;
4. Best practices and guiding principles for Monitoring and Evaluation; and
5. Best practices and guiding principles for Project Sustainability.
2022
LADA Institute has signed a Cooperative Agreement with the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs under the U.S. Department of State (INL) to draft a plea-bargaining legislation and work with stakeholders to push for the passage of the legislation by parliament and create public awareness about the said legislation.
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The expansion of plea bargaining to all offences is a sustainable tool that can have a profound impact on the effective administration of justice. The disposal of some criminal cases by plea bargaining will allow other cases to be tried sooner, decongest the remand prison population, reduce court dockets, and provide greater access to justice.
Currently, Ghana’s criminal procedure only allows for plea agreements in murder and corruption cases. The use of plea agreements in murder cases has proven to be a useful tool yielding the benefits as described above. The expansion of plea agreements beyond homicides should likely have an exponential impact on Ghana’s justice system.
2016 - 2018
With a grant from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), LADA Institute has, built the prosecutorial capacity of all police prosecutors in Ghana. In all, 450 police prosecutors have been trained and continue to be mentored in prosecutorial skills. The 3-year programme which began in January 2016, has so far improved the relationship between actors of the criminal justice system and the citizenry.
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The program was initiated by INL to address the apparent gap in the education and skills of police officers that are appointed to prosecute criminal offences on behalf of the Attorney-General. Consequently, a comprehensive curriculum was developed by LADA Institute for a four-week training session that would hold at six (6) different sessions in Accra.
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Program Achievements:
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300 Police Prosecutors drawn from all the regions of Ghana have successfully undergone the residential program in Accra. Development of a standard curriculum for an intensive four (4) week training program.
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Development of a comprehensive reference manual for field work of police prosecutors.
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Establishment of a sustainable working relationship between Police Prosecutors and State Attorneys across the country.
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Increased knowledge and awareness of prosecutorial standards and techniques to achieve quality prosecutions.
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Significant improvements in the quality of prosecution and increased confidence in court by the participants.
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The capacity of police prosecutors in the key concepts of prosecuting crime has been improved.
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The participants have been trained in Ghana Legal Systems; Constitution and Constitutional Principles; Criminal Law; Criminal Procedure; Law of Evidence; and Trial Advocacy.​
2016
The core objective of the training was to enhance the competence of the lawyers in specialised criminal prosecution by increasing their knowledge base and apprising them of the current trends in prosecuting criminal offences in Ghana.
Overall, the training programme achieved a success as the core objectives were met. The participants demonstrated an increased knowledge in law and skills albeit their training in law. The programme served as a refresher course for the lawyers and it updated their skills in legal drafting, case analysis and trial advocacy. It also established a working relationship with the main actors of the judicial sector, with whom the lawyers will be working as public prosecutors.
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Participants were highly desirous of an extended period of training, particularly for the mock trials, as this forms the main part of any case in court.
2016
When Ghana’s oil was discovered, it brought hope to all the citizens. Has that hope been sustained considering Ghana’s share of the oil that has been produced so far? What factors have contributed to our unhappiness with the oil and gas industry?
The participants at the Ghana conference have dug deep and found the causes of the “resource curse”, and also suggested some remedial solutions to the issues. LADA Institute hosted the conference on “Initiative on Extraction-based Development in Ghana” with sponsorship from IBIS Ghana, SOROS Foundation and Harvard Law School. The one-day conference was dedicated to valorising the natural resources of Ghana (and South Africa in another conference) and was attended by resource persons, Professors from the SOROS Foundation, Harvard Law School and other universities in the U.S.A and in Ghana, and relevant state actors.
The conference was designed to be a very intimate, deliberative and interactive space to explore how oil production can best contribute to Ghana’s development, the debates regarding that, and the positions of participants on the debates.
The conference;
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Explored the divergent opinions about what a progressive petroleum production policy should be;
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Considered how petroleum revenues may be distributed including how the marginalised could equally benefit from the oil proceeds;
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Discussed how the obvious and hidden externalities/costs of the petroleum enterprise (including environmental costs) may be managed in an intelligent way; and
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Deliberated on specific advocacy strategies that might be used to realise each of the above.
2016
The ELFE training for NHIA was structured to enhance the efficiency of the organisation and increase its overall output in terms of universal health insurance coverage in Ghana. Unlike most corporate organisations, the NHIA’s responsibility to society is paramount. As a corporate body responsible for managing public funds and providing financial risk protection, it is imperative that the management and staff of the NHIA are well grounded in fundamental law to secure their investments and reduce liabilities considerably.
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The newly acquired elementary legal knowledge will stir up an awareness of the duties and responsibilities of the NHIA, its relationship with providers and stakeholders and the opportunity to identify the strengths and weaknesses of its operational and regulatory framework. It will also build the confidence of staff and improve their personal development in engaging with members of the society and taking legal decisions for themselves.
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In summary, the overall goal of ELFE for NHIA is to assist the NHIA to efficiently discharge its legal responsibilities at cost-effective rates to the society. To achieve this, ELFE for NHIA was carefully designed and tailored, particularly, to meet the training needs of three levels of management within the NHIA namely: Executive staff; Management Staff and the Mid-level staff.
2014
The core objective of the training was to enhance the competence of the lawyers in specialised criminal prosecution by increasing their knowledge base and apprising them of the current trends in prosecuting criminal offences in Ghana.
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Overall, the training programme achieved a success as the core objectives were met. The participants demonstrated an increased knowledge in law and skills albeit their training in law. The programme served as a refresher course for the lawyers and it updated their skills in legal drafting, case analysis and trial advocacy. It also established a working relationship with the main actors of the judicial sector, with whom the lawyers will be working as public prosecutors.
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Participants were highly desirous of an extended period of training, particularly for the mock trials, as this forms the main part of any case in court.
2016
LADA Institute trained Public Procurement officials through an ELFE series in the following areas;
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Introduction to Public Procurement Law
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Public Procurement Act 2003, Act 663
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Public Procurement (Amendment Act) 2016, Act 914
2014
In 2014, LADA collaborated with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Legal Aid Scheme, Ghana (LAS) to develop an Operational Manual and Guide for the Legal Aid Scheme.
This was aimed at guiding legal aid lawyers and paralegals including Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) officers in their role to provide legal services to the poor and needy, and also to serve as a basis for monitoring compliance of staff in the delivery of legal aid services. This was a major boost to the legal aid scheme of Ghana.
2012
LADA Institute provides consultancy/seminar facilitation services to different institutions and organisations. Among them, the Ghana Federation of the Disabled (GFD) by undertaking a review and gap analysis of the Persons with Disability Act, 2006 (Act 715) to be consistent and in harmony with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) which Ghana ratified in August 2012; and the draft African protocol.
LADA Institute was required to, amongst others, help domesticate the UNCRPD, reform the Persons with Disability Act, and propose appropriate Regulations to the Act through consultative processes.
2012
The training methodology combined lectures, simulations and case studies. This ensured that the personnel being trained received a hands-on approach to learning the rudiments of criminal prosecution in general and the prosecution of forest and wildlife offences specifically.
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The training programme aimed to equipping trainees with the general principles of criminal law and procedure and the social, political and moral context from which it emanates. Thus, at the end of the training the trainees had acquired an overview of the nature of criminal law and procedure including the definitions and classification of crimes, sources of criminal law, parties to offence, defences available in criminal law, justification for punishment in criminal law, conduct of trials and special proceedings in criminal law. Trainees were also equipped with other significant factors influencing and affecting criminal law including the constitution with respect to the notion of equality before the law and equal protection under the law, right to be heard, presumption of innocence and due process.
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The training relied on the expertise of the Attorney-General’s Department to handle aspects such as Criminal Procedure and mainstream practice issues. The LADA team handled the part of the training on the introduction to law and legal terminology, sources of law in Ghana, basics of criminal law, introduction to statutory interpretation and introduction forest and wildlife offences.
2012
LADA embarked on a comprehensive baseline survey of the Justice Sector in Ghana. This was undertaken on behalf of the UNDP and the Ministry of Justice and Attorney General’s Department. The purpose of the baseline survey was to provide information on the current levels of knowledge, experience and attitudes of the public towards the justice sector in Ghana.
The survey collated views on challenges in the sector and how these may be remediated. LADA conducted in-depth interviews with key persons working in justice sector institutions such as the National House of Chiefs (NHC); the Ascertainment of Customary Law Project (ACL) of the NHC; the Justices of the Superior and Lower Courts; the Judicial Service; the Police; the Prisons; the Attorney-General’s Department; the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO); the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ); the Legal Aid Board (LAB); the Law Reform Commission (LRC); the Council for Law Reporting (CLR); the Land Administration Project (LAP) of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources; the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE); and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) working in the justice sector.