Public Agenda (Accra)
Damian Avevor
25 August 2008
column
Human trafficking has become a major menace in Ghana and the African continent. In recent past, the miseries and stultifying effects of the cruelties of the slave trade and slavery which Africa suffered from four centuries before their abolition are better forgotten than remembered, but for the fact that the world is currently plagued by modern day forms of the trade.
In order to develop a programme of action directed at reducing and eradicating the trafficking and smuggling of persons across national, regional and continental boundaries, the Migrants Commission of the Ghana Catholic Bishop's Conference organized a workshop in Accra from July 1 to 2, 2008 for member organisations of Caritas Internationalis, in the West African Sub-Region on dangers of the menace.
The workshop brought together about 35 participants from Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, La Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Cameroon, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and was to give them the opportunity to share experience on human trafficking; discuss strategies to mitigate or eliminate the incidence of the canker in the sub-region.
The workshop also had the objective to identify inputs for a framework to guide, rescue and rehabilitation of strategies against human trafficking and identify various ways of resource mobilization for media campaigns; provide inputs for the establishment of Rescue, Rehabilitation and Reintegration Committee at the Regional, National, Diocesan and Parish levels.
Human Trafficking is defined by the laws of Ghana as "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, trading or receipt of persons within and across borders by the use of force, threats and other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power, or exploitation of vulnerability."
It is against the law of the land to give or receive payments and benefits to achieve consent. Exploitation of people include at the minimum -induced prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or removal of organs.
In Africa and in the Christian context human trafficking is not a new thing because we all know the story of how the elder sons of Israel trafficked their younger brother, Joseph by selling him to merchants.
In the recent past, persons in the majority - women and children in modern times, find themselves victims of human trafficking. The canker shows itself in both national and international dimensions. In respect of Ghana, there are internal manifestations, intra-state manifestations in the West African sub-region, within the continent and between Europe and the Middle-East.
According to a survey in the US between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. Many more are trafficked within their own country. About 1.2 million children are also victims of child trafficking.
The two major routes in West Africa, along which child trafficking takes place are the Mali - Burkina Faso - Ivory Coast route and the Togo - Benin - Nigeria - Cameroon route, with Ghana being a strategic transit point between two routes.
Child trafficking, according to Most Rev. Paul Bemile, Bishop of Wa, is not motivated only by the need for labour on plantation farms and their use as child soldiers, child trafficking forms part of the global sex trade, which is considered as the worst form of child labour.
He said Human Trafficking Bill should be vigorously enforced at both national and international levels to prosecute prospective traffickers and perpetrators of the inhuman trade.
"Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians, government institutions, non-Governmental organisations and faith-based organisations, must all seek to collaborate with each other in order to eradicate human trafficking not only in Ghana but in the West African sub-region and the world as a whole," he stated.
The Bible teaches us that every human being deserves to live in dignity. We Christians believe that God sent his only begotten son, Jesus, to suffer and die for us so that we may be redeemed from suffering. It is therefore not normal for some people to go through suffering caused by the greed and selfishness of their fellow human beings, stated Bishop Bemile, who is also the Episcopal Chairman of Migrants Commission of the Ghana Bishop's Conference.
In Ghana, a religious Organisation known as "Collaboration with Women in Distress "(COLWOD) was set up in 1995 to prevent young girls and women in Northern Ghana from falling prey to human trafficking. In 2001, the Committee for the support of Dignity of Women was set up in Nigeria by the Nigerian Conference of Women Religious to combat the same course.
In Africa, the Catholic Bishop's Conferences had waged relentless war against human trafficking through their pastoral letters with respect to their specific local situations. The Justice and Peace Commission of the Union of Superiors Generally started a working Group in 1999 to fight the trafficking of women and children.
On the regional level, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) initiated its fist plan of action on the fight against illegal trafficking of persons in 2002. Their latest three-year Plan of Action from 2006-2009 aims at protecting and supporting the victims of this infamous trade seeking ways of preventing it by creating awareness, as well as planning strategies for its elimination by the collection of data and the analysis of relevant information.
In July, 2005, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Benin and Ghana signed a multilateral agreement on child trafficking in West Africa, while Memorandum of Understanding was signed between governments.
Despite the many efforts by organisations and religious bodies in finding solutions, the reality is that it is a well networked business operated by people who can be most vicious towards both the victims of human trafficking and the anti-trafficker.
On the domestic scene, both adults and children are lured from the rural areas to urban environs with promises of greener pastures and better opportunities of education, only to have the victims visited dehumanizing working and living conditions.
A story is told in one of the dailies in Ghana about the harrowing experience of a bread baker, who stopped her bread-baking business in Ghana with the hope of making more money as a nanny in Russia, only to be lured into prostitution.
The horrifying experience of the bread baker should be a notice that there are demands for persons, sometimes genuine but which is exploited by traffickers.
The Deputy Minister of Women and Children's Affairs of Ghana, Mr. Daniel Dugan at the West African workshop for member organisations of Caritas Internationalis was quoted as saying that "Even the safety catch net of the extended family system of assisting poorer members of families to cater for their children or to educate them have ended up in situations of exploitations of both boys and girls."
The Director of Ghana Immigration Service, Ms. Elizabeth Adjei, speaking at an Anti-Human Trafficking Training and Capacity Building workshop for law enforcement professionals in Ghana in Accra said only one prosecution had been done successfully so far, although the immigration service and the police had made a number of arrests and cited that in 2007 alone, the Service intercepted 26 persons who were being trafficked.
According to the Immigration head "The Human Trafficking Act, Act 694, can only be implemented to the letter, if arrests made by the police, immigration and the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) are successfully prosecuted."
The International Labour Organisation estimates in its global report that $32 billion was generated annually through the exploitation of men, women and children. People are recruited in a variety of ways through the promise of good jobs only to find that they are in debt to traffickers and thus obliged to work for little or no remuneration.
In an effort to curb the situation, the Deputy Director of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), Assistant Commission of Police (ACP) Ken Yeboah stresses the need for effective networking among security agencies in the fight against human trafficking and also for joint investigative mechanism among the agencies.
On his part, the Bishop of Wa, Most Rev. Paul Bemile suggested that the ECOWAS Parliament should develop pro-poor and affirmative action policies to curb human trafficking in the West-African sub-region.
Ghana has relevant and adequate legal infrastructure in place to prevent trafficking in persons as well as rescue victims of this modern day business in persons. The Human Trafficking Act (Act 560), the Domestic Violence Act (Act 732), the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act are all in place and if effectively implemented, the modern day slave trade and slaveries could be eliminated.
The writer is a Catholic Journalist in Accra
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Public Agenda. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
