While the human trafficking industry connotes images of dark networks and vulgar criminals, the Ghanian reality is those trafficked are children, and the traffickers are their parents.
Author: Mayra Cost
According to the February 2021 report by UNODC, more than 75% of trafficking victims in West Africa were children. Within this, 80% of them were sent to force labour. Although West Africa is not the most notorious region in the world for child trafficking, with the United States, Mexico and the Philippines ranking highest for this crime, it nonetheless must confront this crisis. For the past decades, the Ghanaian government has been taking increasing measures to combat child trafficking, however the issue seems to be rooted much deeper than organized crime units or trafficking gangs.
Although traffickers do tend to form groups which facilitate their operations, most children are trafficked by someone that they know, be it distant relatives or family friends. This derives from the common practice of apprenticeship within the social culture, where children are sent by their families to work for various industries in order to gain experience. Most adults hold the belief that their decision will lead to a better life for their children, which implies that they are unaware of the destructive consequences that their actions have. While those trafficked suffer from a lack of awareness, the traffickers themselves do not necessarily perceive their actions as child exploitation either.
In other cases, poverty-stricken families simply ‘sell’ their children for fees as low as 10 US dollars to local organizations that promise to care for them in exchange for the child’s labour. For large families without a sufficient income, the premise of sending one of their children for what they perceive to be a better life in a different city does not evoke the same reaction as it would for a financially stable household. Hence, children from poorer districts become the main targets for traffickers that seek cheap labour and who later subject them to both psychological and physical violence. The tragedy of the situation lies in the fact that most parents are oblivious of what they have condemned their child to, while the child is left alone to adapt to their new life of violence, deprived entirely of any childish innocence.
In Ghana the problem of child labour is mostly narrowed down to one specific sector – the fishing market. Around the 1960’s the country created Lake Volta, one of the world’s biggest artificial lakes. The province soon became known as the fishing center of the country, however as fish stocks decreased with such an influx of fishermen, their income became insufficient. The solution to this problem became employing children to work, as they were considered to be a source of cheap labour. Their nimble fingers allow them to easy detangle fish from small nets and their little silhouettes make them exceptional divers who scavenge for nets stuck at the bottom of the lake. The fishermen of Volta understood how easily they could exploit this tradition of apprenticeship for the benefit of their business, and the entire Volta region became the national center for child slavery.
One of the organizations fighting against child trafficking is the Child Protection Centre (CPC) in Tema, Ghana. The non-governmental charity specializes in rehabilitating children that are sent to the centre after the national police raids trafficking businesses that use the children as modern slaves. Raphael, a psychology student and an employee at the CPC for over five years shares his experience with us:
Interview Questions & Answers
Raphael, what was the biggest challenge you’ve faced throughout these five years?
I really like working with children, but because I am so involved with the kids I hardly have any time for myself, my personal life and family. Everything revolves around the kids. Because of the all-consuming nature of my work, I have no distinction between work life and personal life. My biggest challenge has been to look into myself to know what is ahead of me.
What is the involvement of the Ghanian Police Department?
We have various institutions dealing with trafficking issues, therefore, the responsibility does not fall solely on the police. For them, the major work is to rescue the children from particular crime-high areas and perpetrators. Their mandate is essentially to help certain organizations in rescue missions, as these are very dangerous communities that they must enter. The part of the police ends after human rights and children’s right violations are filed and investigated. In my opinion the police only rescue the children and take care of the legal process, and they are doing their best within their executive and legal possibilities.
In your experience, does trafficking usually involve inter-family arrangements or are kidnappings more prominent?
Here in Ghana, kidnapping just came in recently. If they do happen it is not children who are at risk but mainly young women, so it is not something that is the largest challenge in Ghana at the moment. Within the last 2 years a few cases have surfaced, but it is much rarer. In other places in Ghana, what I used to hear is that people are kidnapping children and killing them. This is an issue that the CPC might begin monitoring more closely in the future, but at the moment, child kidnappings for the purpose of forced labour are largely unheard of. Child trafficking here usually occurs as a type of exchange within families, so the traffickers are people that the child, or its parents, are familiar with.
After rescuing the children, what is the most common response within such families that you have encountered?
This is very interesting. When children are rescued, and every party involved - the parents and the perpetrators - are brought together, some parents will pretend that they did not know the children were going to be sent to forced labor. They tend to say something along the lines of –“I thought my uncle or my grandfather would take good care of them”. Of course they blame their financial situation for their decision.
But they are your children! Wherever you go, you are supposed to trace them and make sure of their wellbeing. I see the argument of parents ‘not knowing’ as a mere excuse to avoid legal consequences.
Despite that, at times some parents are genuinely unaware of the conditions that they are sending their child into, but it is difficult to determine whether one is lying.
Finally, is there any particular story you would like to share? Perhaps your own?
Everyone has a story to to tell you know: where they came from, how they grew up. I have my story too. I am not from a rich family but a poor household in Sunyani, a city in the eastern side of Ghana. My father passed away and growing up with a single parent was financially challenging for my entire family. Me and my two siblings struggled throughout our childhood to get a good education and even to finish high school, and growing up I tried to develop myself by playing a lot of football, any sports and activities I could find. One day my brother saw me at Sunday school taking care of the children. And the children, they loved me so much, everyone wanted to come to Sunday school to see me. One of the priests noticed how I interact with the children and saw my potential, so I was invited to go complete my high school education in the Don Bosco Sunyani Technical Institute.
I understood there was something within me that pushed me forward, and despite the fact that I had no money, I always remained self-motivated. This determination allowed me to receive my diploma and with the help of Father Peter, a priest in Sunyani, I traveled to Poland to receive my required training and returned to Ghana to work with the Child Protection Centre.
People began to notice how much of my life I dedicated to the children, I am always there with the kids, playing games, teaching them, praying. Two years ago, I was given the opportunity to finally accomplish my dream of getting a higher education, and I began to balance my work in the CPC with my degree. That is my story.
Raphael is one of hundreds working in Ghana to fight child trafficking. One of the biggest issues they face is the question as to whether or not the children should be reunited with their parents after being rescued. The Centre gives mandatory workshops to families to who have sold their children to forced labour in order for them to fully understand the consequences of their actions, however because of the underlying issue of poverty, they can never be certain that the children will remain safe within their own homes. According to the statement by Marilyn Amponsah, the International Community could help build and strengthen local capacity, which is most efficient in combating this issue. Nonetheless, it is crucial to remain independent from foreign support, as this is only a form of temporary relief for such communities. Ghana has been progressing in its fight against child slavery, yet large social and economic shifts within the nation are necessary for permanent change to reach the children in Volta.
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