By Damian Avevor
Introduction
For many decades, the Catholic Church in Ghana has played a critical role in the development of the country, providing essential social services and interventions that touch the core of human existenceinhelping curb the increasing rate of human trafficking.
In order to develop a programme of action directed at reducing and possibly eradicating the trafficking and smuggling of persons across national, regional and continental boundaries, the Migrants Commission of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference had over the years and also recently organized Workshops on the dangers of the menace.
Making efforts to combat and eradicate human trafficking is one of the efforts put in place by the Church through its Social Development Unit of Department of Human Development at the National Catholic Secretariat.
The menace of human trafficking
Even though the Government of Ghana has ratified the following conventions: ILO Convention No. 182 on the elimination of WFCL 182, 138 min. Age; ILO Convention on the abolition of Forced Labour; The UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (Palermo Protocol, 2000); Smuggling Protocol/ Trafficking Protocol; Universal Declaration of Human Rights; African Charter on Human and People’s Rights; the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Optional protocol to the CRC on the Sale of Children, Child Pornography and Prostitution and Convention on the Elimination of all Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the situation of human trafficking is still prevalent and real in the country.
Human trafficking has become a major menace in Ghana and other parts of the African continent. The miseries and stultifying effects of the cruelties of the slave trade which Africa suffered for four centuries before its abolition are better forgotten than remembered, but the world is currently plagued by modern day forms of the trade, dehumanizing the conditions of persons who fall victim to it.
Human Trafficking is defined 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 also against the law to give or receive payments and benefits to achieve consent. Exploitation of people include at the minimum, induced prostitution.
Of late, many people have been thinking that slavery is a thing of the past, but “this social plague remains all too real in today’s world” with child labor, forced prostitution, trafficking for organs and a variety of forms of forced labour.
Obviously, trafficking, which generates huge amounts of income for organized crime, threatens peace because it is based on a lack of recognition of the fundamental human dignity of its victims.
Global Response to the phenomenon
In March2014, the Vatican, the Anglican Communion and others launched the Global Freedom Network. The initiative, based at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, aims to prevent modern forms of slavery; to protect, rescue and rehabilitate victims; and to promote concrete measures that condemn or criminalize human trafficking.
The United Nations estimates that 2.4 million people are trafficked at any given time and their exploitation generates $32 billion in annual profits for criminals. The Global Slavery Index estimates that nearly 30 million people worldwide are living in slave-like conditions.
Recently, Pope Francis, speaking to Diplomats at the Vatican said the trafficking of human beings is a crime against humanity and must be stopped. “It is a disgrace” that people are treated “as objects, deceived, raped, often sold many times for different purposes and, in the end, killed or, in any case, physically and mentally damaged, ending up thrown away and abandoned.”
In his 2015 World Day of Peace message, the Holy Father also emphasised that human trafficking destroys the lives of millions of children, women and men each year, making it a real threat to peace and called it “a crime against humanity” and “an open wound on the body of contemporary society, a scourge upon the body of Christ.”
Response of the Catholic Church in Ghana
According to Acting Director of Social Development of the Department of Human Development at the National Catholic Secretariat in Accra, Ghana, Mr. Lloyd Fiifi Sackey, it is unfortunate that 49,000 children are working on the Volta Lake, 21,000 of which are in hazardous child labour.
He saidabout 17.2 million children aged 5-17 years were engaged in domestic work in the world in an International Labour Organisation (ILO) 2012 Report with boys, representing 3.8 per cent and girls, 9.9 percent (ILO, 2012).
Speaking on “Combating Human Trafficking: Protecting Children from Abuses through Domestic Servitude in Ghana”, at the 2015World Union of Catholic Women Organisation (WUCWO) Day celebration in Accra on Saturday, September 26, 2015, Mr. Sackey saidthe Catholic Church in Ghana had over the years been fighting against trafficking of women and children, describing women as real agents of development who can be engaged to help fight the canker.
The Day was organised by the Accra Archdiocesan National Council of Catholic Women (NCCW)on the theme: Women, Sowers of Hope.
One of the mission of the Church inGhana is to expose and help eradicate modern-day slavery with the vision of having a world where the root causes of human trafficking are adequately addressed.
Hence, the objective of the Social Development Unit at the Department of Human Development at the Catholic Secretariat in Accra, is to raise awareness of all facets of the problem, its magnitude and scope in all its various forms using Church pulpits and Catholic Social Organizations.
According to Mr. Sackey, the Church in her tireless efforts hasdeveloped greater understanding of the root causes of human trafficking, planned effective interventions to growher organization in both membership and outreach capacity, forge alliances with other groups fighting for social justice on human trafficking, and to demand responsive governmental enforcement on human trafficking Act and Legislation and to advocate the rights and services for victims of human traffickingis also one of the objectives of the Unit.
The National Catholic Secretariat continues to promote youth and family empowerment and children’s rights to education and freedom from forced labour in Ghana as well as protect children from slavery in the fishing industry on Lake Volta and Cocoa Growing Areas.
“We will advocate to Churches, schools and national audiences to guide and influence national policy on child rights in general, and the rights to education and freedom from domestic slavery” in particular, he added.
Says Mr. Sackey “we will work in close collaboration with Government Law Enforcement Agencies, the Human Trafficking Unit of Ghana Police Service, the Child Trafficking Unit of Ministry of Gender and Social Protection.”
Active partnerships with other advocacy groups in raising public awareness about human trafficking and domestic servitude as a focal point to our goals, as well as, education of the general public on the implication and the impact of domestic servitude on families and the victims would be intensified.
Mr. Sackey, who has worked for many years at the Department of Human Development dealing with Refugees and Migrants, thinks Ghanaian women especially Catholics could play a role by championing the fight against Human Trafficking and Child labour in the society since they were the most vulnerable.
According to him, womenwere indispensable and play a crucial role in the society. Hence, the need for them to join in the fight against human trafficking and child molestation.
He enumerated some of the root causes of human trafficking in Ghana aspoverty and desperation which maintain a pool of vulnerable victims, Ignorance, large family size and neglect, weak law enforcement and policy implementation, a culture that accepts treating young boys, women and girls as objects that can be bought and sold.
The Church in Ghana in her efforts runs a rehabilitation Centre for children rescued from slavery and provides physical and emotional care; Basic education, Literacy and ICT training, Vocational training-(where appropriate), Medical treatment and Nutrition.
Tirelessly, the Church works extensively with families before and after rescue and provides human rights and child protection education; Facilitate access to child health and education services; Provide family support through livelihoods programme and partakes in long term monitoring of children at home and in school upon return.
It also works with community members, survivors of slavery and their families to build their capacity in resisting child trafficking, provides human rights education, trains Peer Educators,develops and sustains Child Rights Clubs and other programmes.
With all these interventions by the Catholic Church in Ghana, it is unfortunate that in this modern day Ghana,human trafficking has become a deceptive type of international and domestic crime where traffickers exploit vulnerable men, women, and children in slave-like conditions of forced labour and/or sexual services.
Throughout the world, in rural and urban settings, victims are tricked in an uncountable form of exploitive situations including the commercial sex industry, factories, construction, domestic servitude, and agricultural work.
Human trafficking is a global tragedy that robbed victims of their basic human rights and a form of modern-day slavery. Regrettably Ghana is a Source, Transit, and Destination Country.
The two major routes in West Africa along which children are trafficked are the Mali-Burkina Faso-La Cote d’Ivoire route, and the Togo-Benin-Nigeria-Cameroon route, with Ghana being a strategic transit point between the two routes.
According toChief Superintendent Mrs. Patience Quayeof theAnti-Human Trafficking Unit of Ghana Police Service, Ghanahas both Cross – Border and Domestic Human Trafficking. Trafficking in persons is the second largest criminal activity in the world, following illegal drugs just in front of illegal arms.
She explained thatInternal trafficking occurs when women and children are trafficked within the country for work in the fishing industry, as domestic servants, cocoa plantation labourers, street vendors, porters, and for the use in sexual exploitation while External traffickinginvolves the moving of women, men and children across our boarders for all kinds of activities including sexual exploitation.
She advised Ghanaians to stop engaging children as head potters since it was against the laws of Ghana as enshrined the Labour Act,2003 and the Children Act, 1995, urging Ghanaian women to help bring smiles to the faces of recued victims of human trafficking since it affected the dignity, pointing out that as women they had the onerous task of ensuring that their children and others do not become victims.
Mrs. Abena Annobea Asare of the Child Trafficking Section at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MOGCSP), in an interaction with Catholic women during WUCWO day celebration on September 26, 2015, said globally, more than 800,000 persons are trafficked annually, noting that women and girls were estimated to be 66 percent mainly for sexual and labor exploitation.
She noted that “Human trafficking is considered one of the most heinous crimes and a modern day slavery as traffickers profit from the misery of innocent people especially women and children,” Observing that “It is a crime that often uses force, violence and terror to control their victims, often violating their rights and dignity.”
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 with difficult and dehumanizing working and living conditions.
A story is told 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. There are genuine demands for house-helps, laundry persons and other forms of domestic work but one cannot always be sure such demands would escape abuse.
The way forward
Human trafficking is a crime against humanity. We must unite our efforts to free victims and stop this crime that had become ever more aggressive, that threatens not just individuals, but the foundational values of society,” international security and laws, the economy, families and communities.
There is the need for effective networking and joint investigative mechanism among the Security Agencies. If care is not taken to totally eliminate this canker, sooner or later, countries will among other negative things, have large populations of cultureless and religiousless people who do not accept or even understand what love is all about and thus will live without morals.
Interventions by the Government to find jobs for the youth and also encourage children to stay in schools will go a long way to curb poverty, so that parents would be able to keep their children by their side.
Ghana has relevant and adequate legal frameworks in place to prevent trafficking in persons as well as rescue victims of this modern day business in persons. The Human Trafficking Act, the Domestic Violence Act (Act 732), the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act are all in place and if effectively implemented, the modern day slave trade could be eliminated.
Prayer to end Human Trafficking in Ghana
O God, our words cannot express what our minds can barely comprehend and our hearts feel when we hear of men, women and children deceived and transported to unknown places for the purpose of exploitation.
Our hearts are saddened and our spirits angry that their dignity and right are transgressed through threats, deception and force.
We cry out against this degrading practice of trafficking and pray for it to end.
Strengthen the fragile-spirited and broken-hearted.
Let your tender love and care surround them and deliver them from evil and the exploiters’ hands.
Give us the courage and wisdom to stand in solidarity with them, that together we will find ways to the freedom that is your gift to all of us.
