When rescue is not the end, but a beginning

Excerpts from an article on Ghanian child victims of trafficking in the July 2008 IOM Migration Magazine:

“The money I get from my parents to buy food at school is not enough and I am hungry,” pipes up an older boy.

Of all the refrains, this is the most often repeated.

The gathering on the beach is a weekly mentoring session for a group of former child victims of trafficking in Cape Coast in Ghana’s Central Region and an opportunity for the children to unburden their woes, get some advice, and some tutoring help with their schoolwork. Organized by Ghana’s Education Service, the mentoring is part of a package of services being provided by IOM, various government ministries and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to help Ghanaian child trafficking victims recover from their trauma and reintegrate into families and communities.

Since 2003, with funding from the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Migration and Refugees (PRM), IOM has rescued nearly 650 children in Ghana knowingly or unknowingly trafficked by parents to work in fishing communities on Lake Volta in the belief they would be fed, educated and taught a useful trade.

The reality is often different. Forced to work painfully long hours doing heavy and dangerous work because owners or ‘masters’ can’t afford to pay adults to do their jobs, the children are also severely underfed and often abused physically and verbally.

Food- the Main Issue

Food, Mavis Narh says, is the issue in the counselling sessions with trafficked children. “If we could feed these children properly, we would see significant results in just a few short months.”

Faustina Amegashie-Aheto, head of a clinical unit in a district in the Volta region where 90 per cent of the children rescued by IOM live, would agree. A health assessment of 178 children a year after their rescue revealed that 38 per cent of the children were still suffering from stunted growth while 62 per cent were underweight. Although de-worming and improved food intake meant that these figures were a vast improvement on those just gleaned after the children’s rescue, they highlight the enormous work ahead to improve the children’s health.

Challenge of Finishing School

Julia Damalie of the Ghana Education Service and in charge of girl and child education in his district recognises the difficulties older trafficked children face when going back to school. “We may need to consider allowing the children to jump years if they have the ability. We know that some children would much rather not go to school any more because of this age difference issue and instead learn a trade but there is no such facility to provide this at the moment,” she explains.

“At the moment, the retention rate is over 90 per cent but that is because of our sponsorship. The reality is that if 50 per cent of these children actually go on and finish their schooling, the programme would be successful. But we won’t know this for several years,” says Jo Rispoli of IOM in Ghana.

There are also other emerging long-term issues that will bear on the outcome...

“We’ve made a great deal of progress but many challenges remain. The key is to secure enough funding to ensure that the future holds a promise for all the children,” adds Rispoli.

To contribute or to sponsor a child through IOM’s rescue and reintegration programme, please click here.

Child Trafficking in Ghana

From Modern Ghana:

The latest report that 390 child slaves are locked up at Krachi in the Volta Region, published in this paper yesterday, is indeed disturbing, if not disconcerting.

According to our correspondent, these children are under bondage, labouring for fishermen on five islands in the vicinity of Kete Krachi in the Volta Lake area.

These children, the report stated, are among 424 others registered by the Counter Trafficking Unit of International Organisation for Migration mission in Ghana.

Mr Eric Peasah, Counter Trafficking Project Manager, told our reporter that it costs a lot of money to rescue these children because 'we have to compensate the fishermen before they are released to us'.

The Times is indeed worried about the alarming rate at which child trafficking is going on in most parts of the country and called for urgent steps to check it from getting out of hand.

Some of these children mostly between 10 and 15 years are being used as housemaids, farmhands and in other difficult economic activities. Sexual abuse and corporal punishment are some of the hazards some of these children go through at the hands of their slave masters.

The problem of child trafficking can be attributed to a number of factors including poverty and broken homes.

It is on record that in July 2006, an eleven-member states of the Economic Commission for West African States (ECOWAS) including Ghana, entered into multilateral cooperation agreement to fight human trafficking in West Africa.

This led to the passage of the Human Trafficking Act 2005 in Ghana on December 9, 2005.

Read the full article

BBC special on child slavery

BBC World is re-airing the special, Child Slavery with Rageh Omaar.

Around 8.4 million children around the world are enslaved today. Now, in a remarkable journey across three continents, five of them tell their stories. This documentary is presented by reporter Rageh Omaar.

Mawulehawe

Twelve-year-old Mawulehawe has been sold by his mother to a local fishermen in Ghana for $40 (£25). He may not see his mother again for many years.

She will use the money to buy cooking oil to fry the fish she sells on the shore at Ada, a small fishing town a couple of hours drive east of the capital, Accra.

The fishermen to whom Mawulehawe is sold, Aaron, will take him away to serve a three-year apprenticeship. Mawulehawe, like many others in the region, is being sold to help alleviate his family's poverty.

He has several brothers and sisters and has had some schooling, but there is not enough money for him to continue. It is now his younger brother's turn to go to school instead. Mawulehawe insists he is happy with the deal. Fishing has always been part of his life. And his family toast the "sale" with a strong drink, it is clear he sees his new life as a new adventure.

While many of the children working on Lake Volta go enthusiastically, most have no idea the dangers that lie ahead.

The long, unregulated hours and dangers such as getting tangled in the nets underneath the water's surface can lead to accidents and fatalities.

Ali

Six-year-old Ali was picked up by the Saudi authorities for begging on the streets of Jeddah. He was smuggled into Saudi Arabia from Yemen in order to beg.

Ali says he ended up begging after physical abuse involving metal wire attacks on his back. He says he was beaten up when he said he did not want to beg all day.

Ali is one of thousands of Yemeni children sold to gangs and forced to beg each year. These children are often sold by families who are duped into believing their offspring will get a better life.

Many of the children who are smuggled over the Saudi/Yemen border are beaten and sometimes even mutilated to become better, more effective beggars.

It is hard to be exact about figures, but in 2005 the Yemeni Ministry of Social Affairs acknowledged that about 300 children were crossing the border every month.

Rahul and Amit

The Kumar cousins - Rahul, 12 and Amit, seven - thought they were leaving their remote village in the north east of India to go to school and learn a trade. They had no idea their parents had sent them to one of the most populated cities in the world - Delhi - to work in a sweat-shop.

The boys hated sewing beads on fabric for 18 hours a day.  They lived, worked and slept in the same tiny room and only saw daylight when they were allowed out on Sunday under the supervision of a minder. Their hands are blistered and their feet deformed because of the repetitive nature of the work. They were beaten and had little food.

Children like Rahul and Amit who work in the zari units are classified as "bonded labourers", often working to clear obscure debts usually incurred by their families. "Bonded labour" has been illegal in India since 1976 but legislation is largely unenforced and charitable organizations have taken on the burden of investigating illegal labour.

A non-governmental organisation helped the Kumar boys to escape and return home... but the welcome they received was not quite what they were expecting.

Dalyn

When Dalyn was only 12 years old, she was tricked and forced into prostitution. She recalls now how she was approached by a woman who asked her if she would like to work at a garment factory in Kompong Cham.

But when she arrived, she was sold to a brothel in Cambodian capital Pnomh Penh for $150 (£78). Locked up in a cage with others underneath the brothel, she was starved, beaten and threatened at gun point until she agreed to service clients.

Many of the children at the shelter where Dalyn is, became infected with HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases after being sold into sexual slavery, and all have been severely traumatised.

Dalyn was rescued by the police and an aid agency but it is only now, at 17 years old and after substantial amounts of therapy, that she feels able to tell her story. 

Aid agencies are only able to scratch the surface of the problem of child sex slaves in Cambodia. In the first six months of last year, of the 186 raids carried out on brothels by the agency, only two resulted in convictions being made. And in South East Asia alone, Unicef says one million children are involved in the commercial sex trade.

There are more stories on the link, and the show goes into more detail about each of the above stories with interviews with these children. Rageh Omaar also wrote an article in The Somaliland Times discussing the meaning of slavery and the purpose behind the documentary. 

Human traffickers to face heavy sentences in Ghana

From Joy Online and the Ghana News Agency:

The Human Trafficking Programmes Coordinator of the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs Mr. Mark Dundaa, has warned that any person found engaging in human trafficking would serve a prison term of not less than five years.

He was speaking at a day's workshop on Human Trafficking for 25 volunteers in Krachi.

The participants were from Krachi West District and Sene District in the Brong-Ahafo Region.

The workshop was to sensitize the volunteers to help tackle human trafficking in the two districts which were noted to be the destinations for trafficked persons.

Mr. Dundaa said the Ministry had provided temporary basic material support for the care and protection of rescued victims of trafficking and called on stakeholders to support the victims in their rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

Mr. Dundaa said rescued victims were also being trained to acquire skills to enhance their socio-economic development.

Mr. George Achidre, Executive Director of Partnership in Community Development (PACOD), a local human trafficking non-governmental organization, which organised the workshop, urged the public to provide the police with information to help fight the menace.

He advised volunteers to be vigilant and attach seriousness to the work to curb the practice.

Although Ghana has made some progress in its effort to combat trafficking, it only made trafficking a crime in 2005 with the Human Trafficking Act. According to the Legal Resources Centre of Ghana (which produced this assessment of the definition of human trafficking according to the 2005 law), the law was "enacted as a result of increased public awareness of the problem of trafficking in Ghana, partly as a result of local media attention on the trafficking of children for exploitative work."

The exploitation of children happens very often in the fishing industry, according to this article from the UNODC:

Many Ghanian children are trafficked from their home villages to work in the fishing industry. Living in tough conditions and working long hours every day, they are exploited by fishermen desperate to feed their families and eke out a living along the banks of Lake Volta...

The driving forces behind child trafficking extend beyond fish scarcity. Deep-rooted traditions can also help explain the prevalence of this crime. For example, it is common in Ghana for children to participate in apprentice work with a relative or family friend. Many children, and their parents, believe that going away to work is a route to a better life.

"Child trafficking is actually a distortion of the old cultural practice of placement with relatives or townspeople," says Joe Rispoli, Head of the Counter-Trafficking Department of the International Organization for Migration in Ghana. "And many parents don't know the value of education; for them, it's more immediately valuable for their children to learn how to fish."

Child labour and even trafficking are deeply ingrained in the fishing industry in Ghana. Through conversations with child traffickers, it becomes clear that many of them simply do not realize that it is wrong for children to be away from their parents, missing school and performing hard physical work for long hours.

African Cup of Nations '08 May Be Fertile Ground for Human Trafficking

From All Africa:

The African Cup of Nations (ACN) tournament, Ghana 2008, is just around the corner. With thousands of Africans expected from all over the continent to attend the biennial soccer fiesta, much more has to be done to protect vulnerable children and women who may end up as victims of another boom for modern day slave merchants and their collaborators.

Reports clearly state that human trafficking is a major problem in the West African sub-region, and the cross-border nature of the menace makes it even more worrisome. As the tournament, approaches, law enforcement agencies have to be on their toes to combat the plans of human traffickers who may have perfected their acts to turn the football fiesta into another jumbo harvest field for their illicit trade. Human trafficking, according to the United States' State Department report, is the third most lucrative business in the world after drugs and trading in arms, with an estimated annual earning of $5-$7 billion. The United Nations estimates that about 706,000 to four million women and children are trafficked every year. Out of this figure, 50 percent are children with some as young as under six years.

The ECOWAS secretariat estimates that not less than 300,000 children have fallen victim to trafficking in the sub-region, citing an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report. The ECOWAS Commission already has a protocol among member states that makes trafficking an offence. Member states are currently being encouraged to embark on reforms of national laws with a view to harmonising them with international and regional conventions and protocol on Trafficking in Persons.

Only recently, the Ghanaian government was called upon to put adequate measures in place to prevent human traffickers from having their ways. This followed the disclosure by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service and some organisations that some people have perfected plans to recruit children for prostitution during the tournament.

The secret association of commercial sex workers in Accra and Takoradi had earlier expressed concern, though for selfish reasons, about media reports of invasion of prostitutes from neighbouring Nigeria and Cote d'Ivoire in the run up to the African Cup of Nations tournament.

Bright Appiah, an activist with the Children Right International, an NGO also said he had information from Kumasi that some "underground agents" have been paid to recruit sex workers, with children as some of their targets.

Speaking at a two-day workshop organised by the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and sponsored by the British High Commission at Senchi near Akosombo in the Eastern region of Ghana recently, Appiah said as the security agencies beef up their watchdog role in host cities and surrounding towns of Ghana 2008 tournament, children could also be protected if government imposed a curfew on children during the tournament.

While this may appear a sincere suggestion, observers are not in any way in support of this as it will definitely be an infringement of the rights of the child to free movement.International sporting events, no doubt, have become fertile ground for human trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children.

The case of Ghana 2008 cannot, therefore, be an exception. Adu Poku, Director General of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service confirmed this as well. "The international sporting events have become a fertile ground for human trafficking for sexual exploitation, the documented patterns of frequent trafficking of children for force prostitution during World Cups and others as well as the increase of recruitment of children for prostitution in South Africa for the upcoming World Cup create a dire picture. We need to fight it to ensure zero tolerance for human trafficking," said the Ghana CID boss.

Tatiana Kotlyarenko, Executive Director of Enslavement Prevention Alliance West Africa, however, puts the challenge at hand in proper perspective. "In South Africa, there are media reports of how street children as young as nine years old are being lured and prepared for prostitution for World Cup 2010," she said and warned: "With no preventive measures in place and relatively easy border crossings for other ECOWAS members prior to and during the CAN 2008, it is highly probable that thousands of women and children will be trafficked into Ghana for the purposes of exploitation, as well as recruited internally."

Organisations around the world are currently expressing sincere and serious concerns about the problem of human trafficking into the Southern African region in the run up to the World Cup 2010.

The need to adequately prepare for the upcoming World Cup was on of the topics on the agenda at a conference held by the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW) in Bangkok, Thailand last November.

The Nigerian government passed an Anti-trafficking Act shortly after the UN Protocol came into force. Some states in the country have also localised the Child Rights Act.

The National Agency for the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) was also established in 2005 to prevent human trafficking and protect victims of trafficking as well. Under the leadership of Carol Ndaguba, its Executive Secretary, NAPTIP has successfully prosecuted 9 cases resulting in 11 convictions while 35 more cases are ongoing.

* This article does a good job of providing perspectives from multiple stakeholders on the problem of sex trafficking and child trafficking at large international sporting events in Africa, such as the ACN tournament, yet fails to mention anything about tangible initiatives or actions to address the issue. While this may have been a limitation of the reporting, it may also be that there are is no set plan of action at the current time; however, if the latter is true the reporter should have mentioned it.

Read the full article