Latest image gallery - Cattle boys anti trafficking project

Ghana

Ghana is considered an ‘island of peace and stability’ in the West Africa Sub-Region. Since 2000, Ghana has sustained a period of economic stability and has seen one of the fastest rates of poverty reduction in Africa in recent years. Income poverty declined from 42% in 1997 to around 35% in 2005. However Ghana still faces huge challenges. Child health outcomes have stalled in recent years with child mortality recording a small increase.

TheProject

Child trafficking has shown a sustained increase since the 1980s. Poverty and ignorance are major factors which allow thousands of children to be trafficked worldwide into domestic and labouring work, commercial sex work, fishing and farming. These children are denied their childhood, human rights and protection.

Ghanaian children are trafficked to neighbouring countries and within Ghana. They are forced to work on farms, in fishing, mainly in communities along the Volta Lake, in prostitution or as domestic servants in the bigger towns and cities. Children trafficked for fishing and farming purposes are usually deceived into believing that they are going to stay with relatives who will care for them and send them to school. However, they end up working long hours on fishing boats and farms, and are denied any education. 

According to a study by the African Centre for Human Development children in fishing encounter many dangers. These include, maltreatment in various forms, contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, malaria, commercial sexual exploitation, teenage pregnancy, lack of access to education and health care. The greatest danger to these children lies in the risk of being drowned; the study revealed that children are made to dive, sometimes as deep as 50 metres, to disentangle fishing nets caught in tree stumps under the water. Some die in the process.

ANTI-CHILD TRAFFICKING PROJECT

This anti-trafficking project aims at raising awareness about issues of child trafficking in areas identified as sending communities in the North and South Tongu Districts of the Volta Region of Ghana. In the process the project is expected to result in the rescue and prevention of 300 children from trafficking for labour exploitation in fishing and farming along the Volta Lake and other worst forms of child labour.

To achieve this, the following strategies shall be applied:

 Ø      Baseline Study International Needs Ghana shall conduct a baseline study into the situation of   trafficked children to generate information to guide project implementation and for future interventions.

Ø       Awareness education on trafficking of children for labour purposes shall be undertaken in project communities.

Ø      Child Forum Children in the communities as well as those in school shall be assisted to organise children’s forum on child trafficking using the SCREAM PACK developed by the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC).

Ø      Community Child Labour Committees shall be set up and trained to help in the identification and rescue of trafficked children and the mobilisation of community-wide support for the intervention.

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A rescued fisher boy enrolled into school for the first time

Trafficked children would be identified and rescued. Those at high risk of being trafficked shall be prevented. Both the rescued and prevented children shall be mainstreamed into formal schools or vocational skills training.

Abraham's story:

Abraham Seshi: A former fisherman

Abraham Seshi is a fifteen year old boy in the International Needs Ghana School at Kuve in the Volta Region of Ghana. Before enrolling at the school, Abraham was among the thousands of children who have been sent to communities along the Volta Lake where they are exploited for labour purposes in the fishing industry. Abraham was in a fishing community along the Volta Lake called Dambai.

At eight years, Abraham was sent by his uncle who is a fisherman to Dambai. The uncle had deceived the family into thinking that Abraham would be put in school and taken good care of. Instead he was immediately made to fish on the Volta Lake.

He was fishing with one other boy. They usually left home at four o’clock in the morning and came back home at around four o’clock in the evening every day. For over five years his uncle never paid him for all the fishing he did.  According to Abraham his uncle treated him badly; he fed him on “Gari” (cassava-based powder with sugar).

He had no rest at all. They had to row the canoe for long distances and mend the nets. They worked, even in the rains, without any form of protection against the cold and rainstorms. The fishing communities are mosquito-infested exposing them to malaria.  According to Abraham his uncle never gave him a mosquito net throughout his stay at Dambai. “I fell ill a number of times but I was never sent to the clinic. Somehow, my father heard of my treatment and came for me back to the village”.

The father went and took him back as a result of community sensitization, given by International Needs Ghana, on the hazards of child labour and child trafficking and the benefits of educating children.

Abraham was enrolled at the International Needs Kuve Community School last academic year. At fifteen years he is now in primary three, the normal age for primary three children is eight years. Abraham wants to become a lawyer in future.

How can you support this project and others like it?

• Children – International Needs UK seeks to partner UK schools with International Needs schools overseas. Children can benefit from communicating with children from other cultures, learn something of that new culture. Opportunities for involvement may be:

Ø      Child Sponsorship A class or small group could sponsor a child as a joint project

• Adult – International Needs UK seeks to connect adults with projects such as this anti-trafficking project through giving information and opportunity to pray, give and go.

Ø      Give - Sponsor a rescued child in Ghana

• Church – International Needs UK seeks to connect churches as mission partners to engage and get involved in mission and development projects such as this anti-trafficking project. Churches can do this by becoming and International Needs Church Partner.

Ø      Go Global – International Needs gives the opportunity for your church to visit the project in Ghana

• Business – International Needs seeks to connect businesses to our mission and development projects by encouraging corporate partnerships between companies and the charity.

Ø      involve your company in Corporate Social Responsibility

Ø      involve your company in specific development projects

Ø      enable employees opportunities to visit development projects

Ø      enable global perspective