Ethics on the periphery: Unpacking Ghanaian NGOs’ avoidance of research oversight

Many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) conduct data collection on households, children, women, migrants and other vulnerable populations. These activities often meet internationally accepted definitions of human subject research, yet they routinely proceed without ethical review. In this commentary, I critically examine the NGO sector’s disengagement from ethical review processes in Ghana. This commentary critically examines both the structural gaps in national coordination of NGO research ethics governance and NGOs’ disengagement from existing ethics oversight mechanisms in Ghana. The paper argues that misperceptions, funding pressures and structural inadequacies drive NGOs’ reluctance to engage in ethical review processes, and proposes both short-term compliance reforms and the establishment of a national ethics review committee as complementary pathways for reform.