'Enforce laws to promote child rights'

Pg 38. Thurs. May 08/08

Story Rebecca Quaicoe Duho

A Legal Practitioner with the Commission On Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Mr Samuel Bosompem, has called for stringent enforcement of the country’s laws that protect the rights of children.
According to him, although there were what might be described as “adequate laws” covering the rights of children in the country, these laws did not protect the rights of children and this, he said, had led to many children going through untold hardships.
Mr Bosompem, who was reacting to allegations of sexual exploitation of children for commercial purposes, said there was the need for policy makers to put in place stringent measures to ensure that laws regarding the rights of children were enforced and the perpetrators brought to book to serve as a deterrent to others.
Mr Bosompem noted that although Ghana prided itself as being the first to sign onto conventions, protocols or treaties that protected the rights of children, more children continued to go through child labour, trafficking, sexual exploitation, enslavement and abuses in the country.
According to him, Ghana was the first country to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child and was a signatory to the African Charter on Human and People’s Right, and had laws such as the Children’s Act, Courts Act, Human Trafficking Act and the Juvenile Detention Act, among others. He, however, noted that all these laws had not been given meaning in practice, looking at the number of cases that were reported daily on child abuse and exploitation.
Mr Bosompem was also of the opinion that poor parenting was a major cause of child exploitation and abuse in the country, adding that CHRAJ as a body was not happy with the enforcement of laws that protected children in the country.
He made specific mention of the children and court Acts, which he said made separate recommendations for the setting up of child panels to deal with children’s issues but said this had not been done in most districts and, therefore, children were tried in adult courts.
He further deplored the situation of the country’s only juvenile detention centre, ‘The Borstal Institute’, saying that the institute did not have the requisite equipment to reform its inmates.
Mr Bosompem said as a country, “we need to be serious and careful to protect our children”, especially those with disabilities and the vulnerable, saying that all children in the country were entitled to special care as provided for under Article 10 of the International Convention on Economic and Social Right and Article 24 on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires the state and family to give children adequate protection.
He said states were further required to protect its children under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which, among other things, calls for the right to education for children.