Immigration officers’ understanding of human rights, a survey of the Eastern Frontier Stations

Abstract

There were four objectives that underlay the conduct of this study. These were to: examine how much knowledge personnel of the immigration service have of human rights: explore the various sources where the personnel received their human right knowledge from: ascertain the level of human rights understanding immigration personnel have when it comes to practical situations in their operations: and to analyze the correlation that exist between their knowledge and practical understanding of human rights. Investigating the above objectives became very necessary because though immigration personnel are expected to respect and protect people’s rights in their duties, it was however not known whether they have the requisite knowledge and understanding of human rights. The study was conducted as a survey using mixed methods. Data was collected from 120 respondents who were all immigration personnel using questionnaire as the only tool. Respondents were sampled using stratified random and convenient sampling methods. The data collection covered 12 border stations all along the Ghana-Togo boundary. Both quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using SPSS version 16.0 and Microsoft Word. After all the analyses, the findings made by the study were that a large majority of the respondents did not have accurate knowledge of fundamental human rights. It was also found that the knowledge they had of human rights were received from different sources other than G.I.S. trainings. There was also the finding that respondents’ positions on various University of Education,Winneba http://ir.uew.edu.gh 16 practical scenarios were based on their personal attributes and other considerations, and not on human rights tenets. In the end, it was concluded that the respondents had inadequate knowledge of the concepts and principles of fundamental human rights as a result of lack of proper training in Human Rights Education (HRE). There was also the conclusion that the respondents generally lacked a deeper practical understanding of human rights as a result of their inability to readily recognize issues of human rights in their daily operations. Meanwhile, personnel of the immigration service perform very critical functions along Ghana’s borders where they come up against smugglers, criminals, and regular travelers. And the findings made by this study about their inadequate knowledge and understanding of human rights, has the potential of impairing their good judgment and thereby endangering people’s fundamental human rights. It is therefore imperative that the recommendations made in this study are accorded the needed considerations.