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Public Agenda (Accra)

Ghana: Child Prostitutes Are Children First

Shira Rubin

9 May 2008

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opinion

In January of this year the popular brothel known as "Soldier Bar," at Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra, was raided, followed by the arrest of more than 160 mostly teenage prostitutes. Although the women taken into custody were registered into rehabilitation programs, today they are now back on the streets. 60 of the 160 confessed to being younger than 16; evidence of the need to end an activity that has been traditionally regarded with heavy silence. In battles against the hypocritical stigmas and medical dangers suffered by these young girls, legalization and unionization have been proposed in intellectual and political circles as a possible solution.

Professor Agyeman of Cape Town University passionately advocates legalization, stating that it will enable government legislation and avert child prostitution.

However, legalization and unionization are not only profoundly unrealistic but would also be, more importantly, highly obstructive to the efforts of the "war on child prostitution," announced as a top priority by police officials.

Ranked by the US Department of State as the third most lucrative world business after drugs and arms trade, the billion-dollar sex trade traffics 706,000 to four million people annually, 50 percent children as young as six years old, according to United Nations estimates.

Ghana is no exception to this international form of sexual exploitation, which is most visible through sex tourism. Prior to the recent African Cup, panic was incited in police, as they revealed several plots to recruit children into prostitution, and petitioned, without success, for a children's curfew during the games.

Government backing would inevitably prop up the human trafficking industry which has been on a steady incline for decades, and which is to blame for the furtive, though nonetheless staggering, mortality rate amongst young women throughout the continent.

While it would be ideal for prostitutes who have voluntarily entered into the profession to receive workers benefits and medical protection, the examples from New Zealand and the Netherlands, who have decriminalized prostitution, have shown that rather than the women, the pimps, madams, and the State are those who reap the benefits. Although unions may be effective in the distribution of condoms and HIV education materials, once a customer pays his three Cedis for ten minutes, as was custom in Soldier Bar, he is by no means forced to use protection.

Moreover, legalization would sacrifice the young girls who may depend on a future marriage to escape destitution.

Prostitution is often shamelessly rationalized away as victimless crime. But it is Ghana's modern day slavery, seizing the childhoods of an innumerable amount of children, imprisoning them into a life of abuse, and very probably, early death. Legalization or unionization would only provide protection on paper, easing the conscience of politicians and other leaders who possess the power to implement change.

Rather than legitimizing the business, thereby legitimizing the sordid dealing of human and drug trades associated with prostitution, healthcare programs should be provided to sex workers who have voluntarily entered the industry. However, regardless of all the ambiguous and controversial issues surrounding prostitution in Ghana, it must be remembered that young children in the business are exploited as sex slaves. Shattering the silence, and entering, and following through, on vocational training programs, is, for many girls, the only hope for survival.

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