Nominee & Contestant Policy

1. Who This Applies To

This policy is for you if your name, photograph, stage name, biography, or likeness appears on asedahost.com as a nominee, contestant, or entrant in an award scheme, pageant, competition, or public poll — whether or not you have an AsedaHost account, and whether or not you agreed to be listed.

It sits alongside our Privacy Policy and Data Deletion Policy, and gives you rights in addition to those. Where this policy and another document differ on nominee matters, this policy applies.

2. How You Came to Be Listed

There are two ways a nominee appears on our platform:

• You entered yourself. You completed a public nomination form for an event that had registration open, supplying your own name, contact details, photograph, and biography.
• An Event Host listed you. The organiser of the event added you to a category from their dashboard, supplying your details themselves. In this case you may have had no involvement, and may not have known you were listed until you saw it or were told.

3. Consent & Host Responsibility

Event Hosts are required, as a condition of using AsedaHost, to confirm that every nominee they list has consented to their nomination, or that the Host has a reasonable and lawful basis for including that person in a public merit award.

Aseda Host does not independently verify that consent before an event goes live. We state this plainly rather than implying a check we do not perform. Nominee listings appear on the strength of the Host's confirmation. This is why the removal right in section 5 exists, and why we act on it quickly and without requiring you to prove anything beyond your identity.

A Host who lists a person without a proper basis is in breach of our Host Agreement, and is responsible for any claim arising from that listing.

4. Your Rights as a Nominee

Whether or not you have an account with us, you have the right to:

• Know what is published about you. Ask us what nominee information we hold and which event it appears in.
• Correct it. Have a misspelled name, wrong photograph, or inaccurate biography fixed.
• Have it removed. Require that your listing be withdrawn from public view — see section 5. You do not need the Host's permission, and you do not need to give a reason.
• Object to a photograph specifically. Ask that a particular image be taken down while leaving the rest of the listing, if that is what you prefer.
• Complain. Raise the matter with us, and separately with Ghana's Data Protection Commission, whose details are in our Privacy Policy.

Exercising any of these rights is free, and we will not ask you to justify your decision.

5. How to Have Your Listing Removed

Contact us on any of the channels in section 10, telling us:

• the name as it appears on the listing;
• the event or award scheme it appears in, or a link to the page;
• a phone number or email address we can reach you on to confirm you are who you say you are.

What we do, and when:

• Within 24 hours: we acknowledge your request.
• Within 24 to 48 hours of verifying your identity: your name, photograph, and biography are withdrawn from the public voting pages.
• Promptly afterwards: we notify the Event Host that the listing has been withdrawn, and why.

We remove first and discuss afterwards. If a Host disputes the removal, that is resolved between us and the Host under section 8 — your listing stays down in the meantime.

6. What Happens to Votes Already Cast

If people have already paid to vote for you before your listing is withdrawn, those votes were real financial transactions, and we are required to keep the underlying payment records under Ghanaian financial law. So:

• Your name and image come down from the public pages and leaderboards.
• The vote records themselves remain in the event's accounts, so the Host and voters can be correctly reconciled, and so we can meet our retention obligations.
• Where our systems allow, the tally is shown against a neutral label rather than your name.
• Voters are not automatically refunded, because the vote was a completed purchase — refunds remain governed by our Refund Policy.

In short: your identity is removed from public view, but the money trail behind it stays intact and is no longer publicly connected to you.

7. Minors & Vulnerable Persons

Where a nominee is under eighteen (18) years of age, or is an adult who lacks capacity to consent:

• A parent, legal guardian, or court-appointed representative may exercise every right in this policy on that person's behalf.
• We will act on a removal request from a parent or guardian without requiring the nominee's own confirmation.
• We treat requests concerning children as urgent and aim to withdraw the listing within 24 hours of verifying the relationship.

Hosts running events that involve nominees under 18 are responsible for obtaining parental or guardian consent before listing them, and for any child-protection obligations attaching to their event.

8. Disputed Removals & Appeals

Occasionally a Host will assert that a nominee did in fact consent, or that the nomination is a matter of legitimate public interest — for example, a public figure nominated in an open industry award.

• The listing remains withdrawn while we look into it. We do not restore a listing pending review.
• We ask the Host to produce evidence of consent or of their lawful basis.
• We tell you what the Host has said and give you a chance to respond.
• Where a listing is restored, we tell you before it goes back up, and explain why, so that you can escalate to the Data Protection Commission if you disagree.

If a matter is subject to a court order or a regulatory direction, we follow that.

9. Obligations on Event Hosts

If you run events on AsedaHost, you agree that:

• Every nominee you list has consented, or you have a documented lawful basis for listing them.
• You hold the rights to any photograph you upload, and are not using an image taken from social media or elsewhere without permission.
• Nominee biographies are accurate and not defamatory.
• You will obtain parental or guardian consent for any nominee under 18.
• You will not restore, re-add, or re-upload a nominee whose listing has been withdrawn at their request. Doing so is a material breach and grounds for immediate termination under our Host Agreement.
• You will pass on to us, promptly, any complaint a nominee makes to you directly.

You indemnify Aseda Host against claims arising from nominees you listed, including claims for breach of privacy, defamation, or infringement of image rights.

10. Contact & Escalation

To make a request under this policy, or to report a listing that concerns you:

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your request, you may complain to Ghana's Data Protection Commission. Their contact details are set out in section 7 of our Privacy Policy. You do not need our permission to do this, and you do not have to come to us first.