Political vigilante violence in Ghana: its human rights implications

Abstract

The primary goal of this paper is to consider the incontrovertible links between political vigilante violence and human rights violations in Ghana. In particular, it pays attention to the ways in which politically-related violence thrives. To achieve this, the paper will be guided by the following research objectives: First, to explore the nature of political vigilantism in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. Second, to analyse the human rights issues in political vigilantism within this period. Drawing mainly on experiences of general elections of Ghana’s Fourth Republic, the paper purposes to interrogate the scale of political vigilante violence in Ghana. It contends that there is an intricate link between political vigilante violence and human rights. The paper relies on frustration-aggression theory to consider the ways in which the desire to gain political power leads to rivalry and eventually to violence.