Strengthen fight against human trafficking

Daily Graphic, Pg 11. Sat. Feb. 27/10

Article: Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

HUMAN trafficking, a modern day slavery, has become an international problem affecting millions of people around the world.
In Ghana, aside the international trafficking of the educated to perform informal jobs, the internal trafficking of children to work in fishing or farming communities is a challenge, coupled with the luring of women to engage in prostitution or forced marriages in neighbouring countries or in Europe.
Many children in Ghana are given away by their parents on the pretext of going to stay with a relative but they end up working in the fishing or farming industry under tough conditions.
These children are exploited by their managers or foster parents and are made to carry heavy loads on the farm or dive into the rivers, especially into the Lake Volta, where this activity is most prevalent, to disentangle nets from tree stumps, among other difficult tasks.
Many international organisations such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) together with the government has devised many strategies to ensure that the issue of human trafficking became a thing of the past.
Several laws such as the ILO Convention 182 which states that “Each Member which ratifies this Convention shall take immediate and effective measures to secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour as a matter of urgency”, and locally such as the Human Trafficking Act 2005 (Act 694), the Domestic Violence Act 2007 (Act 732), the Children’s Act 560 and the Criminal Amendment Code has been ratified to help end human trafficking in the country.
Also the work of the Ghana Anti-human Trafficking Unit under the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana Immigration Service and the Attorney General’s Department is a landmark achievement for criminal justice respondents in the country. This intelligence-led investigation, has led to the arrest and subsequent prosecution of members of organised and international human trafficking rings.
Recently, three Chinese and a Ghanaian suspected of being part of a ring trafficking Chinese women into Ghana for prostitution were arrested and prosecuted.
Also a couple in Cape Coast who received trafficked children for purposes of engaging them to work for them were arrested and prosecuted.
Several other moves have been made to help halt migration across the country, a recent one was by the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC) in collaboration with Rescue Foundation, where a national database on human trafficking has been established to provide a comprehensive research on the phenomenon and to serve as a source of information on human trafficking for planning and implementation of projects.
In this regard, an 18-member national steering committee, made up of individuals from both government and non-governmental agencies, have been put in place to oversee the compilation of the database and to ensure an effective co-ordination and the gathering of data.
The objective of the project is to identify relevant agencies in the area of trafficking in persons for effective collaboration and partnership, as well as to help design an effective referral system that will facilitate victim support and other interventions in tracking trafficking.
The target of the project is to gather information from stakeholders operating in the areas of trafficked persons.
Despite all the efforts being made, issues such as lack of shelter, inadequate logistics, ineffective monitoring and evaluation systems, ineffective communication mechanisms for dissemination of information and ineffective collaboration has been identified as some of the major challenges facing the successful elimination of human trafficking in the country.
It is for this reason that a meeting with law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, officials from ministries departments and agencies, civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations was held in Accra over the week to assess the country’s progress in combating human trafficking.
The meeting which was the second to be organised on an annual basis is aimed at challenging participants to review and assess the progress made under a capacity building programme for law enforcement agencies and the judiciary to combat human trafficking and irregular migration through and from Ghana.
Under the capacity building programme, the Royal Danish Embassy has trained 18 judges as resource persons in the area of trafficking and irregular migration with an additional 25 judges who participated in a training workshop which strengthened their knowledge and expertise to prosecute, convict and sentence traffickers.
Also a group of 25 law enforcement officers and prosecutors, involving officials from the AG’s department, the Police Service, Immigration Service, Ghana Navy and officials from the Customs Excise and Preventive Service are also in the process of being trained.
Also through the effort of the embassy, nine law enforcement and judicial officials were taken to the United Kingdom where they visited the UK Human Trafficking Centre, the Crime Prosecution Services, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the UK Border Agency and the Home Office, all in an attempt for them to acquaint themselves with UK policies and best practises put in place to counter trafficking.
The Chief of Mission, International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Ghana, Ms Dyane Epstein, says “in spite of all these implemented activities, the work remains unfinished. We should be under no illusion that we have stopped combating human trafficking, be it in Ghana or elsewhere in the world”.