Madam Charity Batuure, the Upper West Regional Director of the Department of Gender, has advised young women and girls to place a high premium on their self-esteem and to avoid acts that have the tendency to tarnish their self-images.
She advised them to desist from sharing obscene materials including explicit sexual content on WhatsApp and Facebook, which could damage their reputation in the future.
Madam Batuure gave the advice at the weekend during a youth symposium held in the Wa Municipality, on the civil responsibilities of youth regarding the growing incidence of creating and sharing obscene materials on the Internet.
The forum, which was organized by the Community Aid for Rural Development (CARD) Ghana, in partnership with Curious Minds Ghana and Info Radio, a local radio station in Wa, was in relation to the flogging of a young woman and man in Wa whose sex videos went viral on social media earlier this month.
Madam Batuure explained that some people engage in the sharing of such content on social media for diverse reasons without recourse to the future implications thereof.
“One day, you will want to stand for a position or to engage in some important social activity and someone will pull out the video that you shared some years back just to discredit you and make you not worthy for that position or activity,” she explained.
Madam Batuure, therefore, advised the young women and girls against storing their sex tapes on their phones or sharing them with any other person as it could bring an undue indictment on their personalities in the future.
Mr Dominic Paaga, a lecturer at the SD Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (SD UBIDS), explained that sharing sex tapes on social media could lead one into conflict with the law.
He said when found guilty, the victim could face various degrees of punishment including imprisonment to a term of 25 years.
Mr Paaga, who is also a private legal practitioner, entreated the public to support the law enforcement agencies to enforce the laws to the letter.
While reacting to a question that suggested that a section of society had lost confidence in the legal system, he said law enforcement was a collective responsibility of citizens and law enforcement institutions.
Ms Leenat Abdul-Rahman, the Executive Director of CARD Ghana, noted that the forum was to afford the participants the opportunity to discuss how they could collectively fight the menace of obscenity on social media.
Other speakers were representatives from the Waala Traditional Council, the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), and the Clergy, with the participants drawn from youth-led organisations and the Upper West Regional Musicians Association of Ghana (MUSIGA).
The forum also unveiled social media hashtags – “#Leaveoutobscenity”, “#Saveyourdata” and “#SaveWa” as part of measures to help campaign against the proliferation of obscene materials on social media.
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