There are still more than 130,000 victims of human trafficking, with children forming a significant number of them in the country.
“Even more disturbing, over 20,000 trafficked children are working in the fishing industry on the Volta Lake alone,” the Chairperson of the National Commission of Civic Education, Kathleen Addy, has said.
She said the children were forced to dive into deep waters, risking their lives daily to untangle fishing nets, under harsh and dangerous conditions.
Ms Addy was addressing the opening of a two-day workshop for 35 selected district directors and officers of the NCCE in Ho last Monday.
The workshop, organised jointly by the International Justice Mission (IJM) and the NCCE, sought to consolidate technical knowledge and strengthen the NCCE’s frontline role in prevention, civic reporting, justice coordination and survivor-centred response.
It was on the theme: Strengthening District-Level Prevention, Justice Coordinated Response to Child Trafficking in Ghana.
The Chairperson of the NCCE said about 21 per cent of children between the ages of five and 17 were engaged in child labour, and 14 per cent of them were involved in hazardous work.
“While exact numbers are difficult to determine, research consistently shows that the majority of trafficked victims in Ghana are children and many of them are girls,” she told the participants.
Ms Addy pointed out that child trafficking in Ghana was not exclusively internal, saying children were moved from rural communities to cities, farms, mines and especially fishing communities with false promises of education, opportunities and a better life.
Sadly, the children were trapped in exploitation, working long hours unpaid, abused and deprived of education, she said.
Poverty
Ms Addy attributed the trend largely to poverty and certain social norms in which families struggling to survive sometimes saw no alternative but to send their children to live with someone else, even if it exposed them to danger.
Meanwhile, she said weak enforcement systems and limited resources continued to make it easier for traffickers to operate.
Ms Addy called for concerted efforts to reverse the trend and said child trafficking not only exposed children to physical danger, emotional trauma and psychological scars, but also stripped them of their dignity, deprived them of education and took away their childhood.
She said communities must not remain silent in matters of child trafficking because silence protected the trafficker and not the child.
Policy framework
The National Director, Advocacy and Partnerships of IJM, Worlanyo Kojo Foster, said despite Ghana’s strong legal and policy framework on human trafficking, operational gaps at district and community levels continued to undermine prevention, early identification and effective referral and justice outcomes.
He said in many high-risk communities, trafficking practices were normalised, early warning signs went unreported and civic follow-through remained weak.
Mr Foster said IJM’s collaboration with the security agencies in the fight against child trafficking was yielding positive results.
Later, Ms Addy and Mr Foster signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the NCCE and IJM to reaffirm their stance to continue to work together with greater zeal and enthusiasm in the fight against child trafficking.
The participants were drawn from the Ashanti, Bono East, Central, Greater Accra, Oti, Savannah, Volta and Western regions.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh