Her name was Joana Deladem Yabani. She was twenty-one years old. She was a final-year Biological Sciences student at KNUST. She had a father who loved her, friends who trusted her, and a future that belonged entirely to her.
On the morning of 27 February 2025, her body was found on campus. The circumstances were violent. The suspect was a fellow student. The nation was shaken.
AWLA Ghana was not silent.
Why we spoke
There is always a temptation, in the aftermath of a tragedy like Joana’s, to wait. To see how the investigation unfolds. To let the institutions do their work. To avoid speaking until you have all the facts.
AWLA Ghana rejected that temptation. Because waiting, in cases like these, has its own cost. It signals to survivors that the legal community is watching from a distance. It signals to perpetrators that outrage will be measured and conditional. And it signals to the public that violence against women is a tragedy to be observed, not a pattern to be confronted.
On 4 March 2025, AWLA Ghana issued a formal public statement. Not to interfere with the judicial process. But to make clear, without hesitation, where we stand.
What the statement said — and what it meant
AWLA Ghana condemned the murder in the strongest terms. We called on the Ghana Police Service — which had already made an arrest — to ensure full accountability through the courts. We urged the media to follow this case with the same sustained attention it brought to the early reports. And we stood in solidarity, publicly and by name, with Joana’s family.
But the statement said something else too. Something harder to hear.
Joana’s death was not an isolated incident. It was the latest in a pattern of violence against women in Ghana — intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and murder — that has been escalating and has too often been met with inadequate response. AWLA Ghana named that pattern directly. Because the law cannot address what no one is willing to say out loud.
The courage it takes to report
One of the most painful details to emerge in the weeks following Joana’s death was that she had reportedly disclosed to a friend that she had experienced physical violence in the relationship before — and had chosen to stay, out of love and forgiveness.
That detail does not diminish her. It does not explain away what happened to her. But it does ask something urgent of all of us — of families, universities, institutions, and communities — about how we support women who are in dangerous situations before those situations become fatal.
AWLA Ghana is committed to that work. The legal fight for justice after violence is only part of what we do. Equally important is creating the conditions — through education, community support, and institutional accountability — where women can report, leave, and be protected before they are harmed.
What justice looks like
Justice for Joana is not only a conviction. Though the full prosecution of this case, and the outcome that follows, matters enormously — to her family, to every student on that campus, and to the principle that Ghana’s laws exist to protect women’s lives.
Justice for Joana also looks like a university campus where a young woman can report abuse to a counselling centre and receive a response that prioritises her safety. It looks like a culture where a friend who hears about violence does not have to carry that information alone. It looks like a legal system that treats femicide as what it is — not a domestic matter, but a crime against humanity.
AWLA Ghana will continue to monitor this case. We will continue to advocate for its full and transparent prosecution. And we will continue to speak — not only when the world is watching, but in the quieter moments when the work of changing the conditions that produce violence against women happens slowly and without applause.
To Joana’s family
We see your grief. We carry it with you. And we make this promise — not as a statement, but as a commitment we intend to honour through every case we take, every community we reach, and every law we push to be strengthened — that her name will not be forgotten in our work.
We stand with Joana. We stand with every woman in Ghana who deserves to be safe.
AWLA Ghana’s full public statement on the murder of Joana Deladem Yabani was issued on 4 March 2025. For further information, contact: info.awlaghana@gmail.com