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Ghana International Organizations
Ghana belongs to sixteen UN organizations and twenty-four other
international organizations, including the Commonwealth. Nkrumah
saw the UN as the most effective forum for small, poor countries
such as Ghana to exert some influence in a world dominated by more
powerful nations. As it had with the Commonwealth, Ghana, a leader
among countries of the developing world, sought to enlarge the UN
role in economic development and to make it an effective force for
world peace. Ghana was also a leader of the African countries that
lobbied to advance the cause of freedom in Africa. Nkrumah made the
UN Charter a plank of Ghana's foreign policy and helped to make the
UN a forum for nonalignment as he maneuvered with other Afro-Asian
leaders between East and West. Among Ghanaians who have achieved
world prominence in the UN is Kenneth Dadzie, who from 1986 to 1994
was Secretary General of the UN Conference on Trade and
Development.
The PNDC preserved Ghana's commitment to the ideals and
objectives of the UN. In recognition of Ghana's strong commitment
to African causes and its active involvement in the General
Assembly, Ghana became one of the African countries elected to a
non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council during 1986-87. Ghana
has also contributed troops to UN peacekeeping operations around
the world, including Iraq-Kuwait (1991), Cambodia (1992-93), and
Rwanda (1993-94)
(see International Security Concerns
, ch. 5).
The PNDC also maintained Ghana's active membership in the NonAligned Movement. Indeed, the 1991 diplomatic highlight of the PNDC
government was its successful hosting, in Accra in early September,
of the tenth ministerial conference of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The meeting attracted one of the largest contingents of foreign
ministers of all recent African conferences.
Ghana also hosted a well-attended conference of nongovernmental
organizations in Accra in late August 1991 as a prelude to the
nonaligned conference. The conference concerned itself with
economic development, peace, and a just world order.
In honor of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president and a
founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and of Pan-Africanism,
the PNDC commissioned the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and the
Nkrumah Mausoleum in Accra on July 1, 1992. The remains of the late
president were brought from Nkroful, his birthplace, and reinterred
in a moving public ceremony. The park and the mausoleum fulfilled
a pledge made by the PNDC in 1990 to commemorate Nkrumah's
contributions to Ghana and to Africa by means of an appropriate
memorial.
Data as of November 1994
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