NGOs, government agencies and local leaders await new bill

Francis Azada wakes up at dawn and works on the Volta Lake until dusk. He looks dirty and tired, has an infected sore on one of his toes and is hesitant to talk. He lives and works against his will at Adakope, under his master Mr. Ojukwu Hadzor.

The fifteen-year-old is from Bakpa-Newtown, a village near Sogakope in the Volta Region. Due to his mother's inability to pay his school fees, he was forced to abandon his education at the age of 11. That is when he was trafficked to Adakope, a fishing village along the Volta Lake near Yeji, in the Brong-Ahafo Region.

Francis and more than ten thousand other children between the ages of three and 17 are trafficked from all over the country, many through Yeji, to communities like Adakope, Jaklai and others along the Volta Lake.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has located 15 such communities in the Brong-Ahafo Region, and knows of at least 35 more near Yeji.

They have also located 20 communities in the Volta Region and 15 in the Central Region.

It is estimated that two thirds of boys work as fishermen, while girls often engage in various forms of selling, but are also used to carry and prepare fish.

Southern parts of the country are known to be sending areas, where the children come from, and the northern areas are typically receiving areas.

In addition to the captivity and forced labour these children encounter, access to basic education, health care, food, clothing and other needs essential for survival and development are rarely met.

A study conducted in 2002 by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), showed that the educational background of children surveyed was generally poor.

Sixty-two per cent of interviewees said they had no formal education.

After four years of enslavement, Francis is ready to leave the village. "I feel like going home," he said. "I want to go to my mother, I have stayed here too long."

Although he is not registered with the IOM yet, he is able to provide IOM field staff with the names of other enslaved children he works and lives with.

The rigorous conditions these children encounter on the lake, further adds to the burden they face at home, where maltreatment from their masters is common. Most villages also lack electricity, health care facilities, and clean water.

When they are trapping fish on the lake, Francis said that the nets often get tangled at the bottom of the lake. Diving to untangle them is considered the most dangerous task. "I don't like going in to remove it," he said. "It is dangerous and people normally get injured."

Many children have reportedly drowned while diving, and others have heard of capsized boats leading to deaths.

In addition to being forced to dive, Francis said that the masters beat the children while they are fishing. They are not permitted to say when they are tired, nor are they permitted to stay home when ill.

The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons especially in Women and Children, defines trafficking as "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or the use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another."

Since masters obtain trafficked children through middlemen (they are sometimes auctioned in markets) as well as from parents themselves, families often have no knowledge of their children's living conditions. Likewise, they often do not know where their children are located.

However, the process is reportedly a very organized operation, where hundreds of children arrive in an apparent annual ritual.

Children leave their homes with expectations of better treatment and more opportunities, as some are promised education and only fishing part-time. However, the situation is rarely an improvement, and fishing typically takes up all of their waking hours. The children are made to work long hours, with very little food or rest.

The fundamental human rights and freedoms enshrined in Chapter 5 of the Constitution require that the state protect citizens from slavery and forced labour. The need to protect the child is further clarified within the same chapter, which states that the child has "the right to equal levels of special care, assistance and maintenance, against exposure to physical and moral hazards, against engaging in work that constitute a threat to his health, education or development, against torture or other cruel inhumane or degrading punishment."

A sub-part of the Children's Act 1998, Act 560 on Child Employment and Labour puts the minimum age for people involved in hazardous work at 18. It states "work is hazardous when it poses a danger to the health, safety or morals of a child."

Hazardous work includes going to sea, mining, carrying heavy loads and other such forms of employment. The Act also prohibits the engagement of a child in exploitative labour. "Labour is exploitative of a child if it deprives the child of its health, education or development."

Reports indicate that children have been trafficked from the Central, Volta, Greater Accra and other regions to villages along the Volta Lake to work as slaves since 1966.

In its effort to eliminate child trafficking in 2002, the government joined the International Labour Organization (ILO) and International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) sub-regional programme entitled 'Combating the Trafficking of Children for Labour Exploitation in West and Central Africa.' ILO Convention 182 outlaws child trafficking and the worst forms of child labour.

The organization, along with the IOM, several other NGOs and government departments, have contributed to the draft human trafficking bill. Most of those involved expect that it will be passed by parliament sometime next year, although it seems to have been delayed by the upcoming election. Currently, the Attorney General's department is revising the bill.

Even when the law is passed, most experts agree that enforcement will require significant financial support, training of law enforcement agencies and education.

Mr. Eric Okrah, the ILO National Coordinator for its Action Programme Against Forced Labour and Child Trafficking in West Africa, said that the lack of a specific law that bans child trafficking in the country presents a major challenge.

"Because we do not have trafficking in the law, it becomes difficult for people to be prosecuted when they are caught," he said.

He added that the sentences associated with child stealing and abduction are minimal in relation to the type of activity.

The inhumane treatment that most trafficked children do battle with daily was evident on the shores of the Volta Lake at Adakope. There, after hours of fishing, nine-year-old (according to his master) Godwin Misroame was found eating a bowl of gari and 'pepper.' He does not have enough time to return home to eat or rest before he must return to fish on the lake.

Godwin does not know how old he is or where he comes from. He looks traumatized and cannot answer when asked whether or not he likes the situation he is in. He did say that he wakes up at 2 or 3 a.m. every day, and returns from work at 8 p.m. or later.

He has asked his master to send him to school, but is continually refused. He is also forced to dive when nets become tangled, and often hears children crying on the lake, due to abuse from masters.

Fishermen frequently practice the dragnet method of fishing, which is banned by the government. This method requires many people to pull nets, which explains the need for a large number of working children.

Mr. John Adanya, the Vice-Head of the Adakope community, said that adults who are paid to fish frequently engage in stealing, fighting and drinking. Adults also demand pay, so this is another reason fishermen prefer using children.

Mr. Adanya said that child slavery cuts across every fishing community along the Volta Lake.

The IOM estimates that more than 80 million children in Africa are trafficked into forced labour, slavery or similar situations. Several thousand of these children are located in fishing communities in Ghana.

To help these children out of servitude, the IOM has instituted a program called Preventing and Combating Child Trafficking in Fishing Communities in Ghana, with the project's transit camp at Yeji.

The project, which began two years ago, is aimed at rescuing all trafficked children in the fishing communities along the Volta Lake. As part of the project, the community is educated about the need to keep children out of hazardous work, while slave masters are advised to release their trafficked children.

Initially the IOM provided financial assistance to masters who released their children voluntarily. But due to abuses of the system, they now help fishermen set up other businesses, such as poultry or pig farms.

After being released, the children are sheltered at the Yeji camp, before been reunified with their parents. At the camp the children are fed, given medical treatment and counseled to reintegrate them into society.

While most of the children were found happily playing with others, others were vomiting repeatedly, as many children arrive at the camp with untreated sicknesses.

The staff said it was common for the children to suffer from gastrointestinal disease, bilharzia, ear problems and other ailments due to poor living conditions and improper care.

Before the children are transported to their places of origin, they are placed into schools and apprenticeships, depending on their level of education.

The IOM monitors their families for two years to ensure that the children are going to school and being properly cared for, as the families also receive money and other forms of assistance.

The IOM has reunified 400 children in the past two years. Currently there are 75 children at the camp, which is the maximum capacity.

Chiefs and local community leaders are eager for the human trafficking bill to be passed. This will enable them to work with law enforcement agencies to combat child trafficking. Yeji Paramount Chief Nana Yaw Kagbrese V expresses his prayers "that not only Ghana, not only Africa, but the whole world will get a law to end child trafficking and child labour."