Domestic violence: Do not refuse your spouse’s meal
It is an offence to refuse to eat your wife's food, the Coordinating Director of DOVVSU has said
Chief Supt. Owusuwaa Kyeremeh, Coordinating Director of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit(DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service says refusal to eat spouses’ meal as a way of punishing a partner constitutes domestic violence.
Speaking on the program, “The Law” on Joynews, she explained that if a spouse decides not to eat a partner’s meal for some genuine reason like fear of being poisoned, then one has a good case.
“But not for one reason or the other may be your partner caught you with some unfriendly text messages or saw you in a compromising position with somebody and as a result, you want to counter by pretending to be angry or being defensive and all of a sudden, you stop eating the person’s food,” Chief Supt. Kyeremeh told the host Samson Lardy Anyenini on Sunday, June 6, 2021.
Head of Ahmed Legal Consult, Musah Ahmed however disagrees with the context and framing of that section of the Act.
Countering the argument advanced by Chief Supt. Kyeremeh, Musah Ahmed indicated that it is also domestic abuse per the law to force your husband to eat your food.
“For me, I have a problem with the definition as captured in sections 1b, 2, and 3 the ones dealing with economic and emotional and verbal psychological human abuse.
“You see under the chapter of the constitution we have the fundamental human right which is entrenched and the enjoyment of these fundamental rights are subject to such laws as contained in chapter 5 to look at the freedom of a person, you can call it the husband.
Musah Ahmed believes that section of the Domestic Violence Act contravenes Chapter 5 of the 1992 Constitution.
This, according to him is because people are making a lot of positions out of the Act. He added that there should be no limitation or pressure forcing one to eat the other’s meal.
“Don’t you think that when you force me to eat my wife’s food, it is an infringement of my constitutional right as enshrined in chapter 5? It is and the constitution is the Supreme law, any law that infringes any aspect of the constitution shall be void,” he added.
Mr.Musah Ahmed ended with the statement that he disagrees with limiting females only to cooking. He added that no law that says that a woman should always cook for her husband.
