After fifty years of independence from British colonial rule, Ghana made history by passing into law a bill aimed at combating domestic violence. This bill was met with vehement opposition by those who claimed that the women's movement it embodied was not in line with Ghanaian culture and that it borrowed uncritically from Western feminism. Using the rights concerns of women and minorities in Ghana as an entry point, the author discusses the interconnected nature of first and second generation rights and cultural relativism in universal rights discourses. The author first engages theoretical debates on the power dynamics which are in play in assessing human rights as a universal good and provides context for women's rights advocacy in Ghana. The author then focuses on how Canada engages Ghana in the promotion and protection of human rights. Finally, the article concludes with suggestions for a research agenda on Canadian-Ghanaian human rights engagements that would include a detailed ethnographic work to assess the myriad of human rights problems and employ critical discourse analyses on texts to understand how both governments address these issues.