Child Trafficking - The story of Abaidoo
Abaidoo was intermittently choked with tears as he narrated his story. The gathering cried with him. Occasionally, his voice shook.
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It was a story of hunger, pain, rejection and maltreatment. He had been given out by his parents to people in foreign countries to work with them.
Abaidoo stood before hundreds of his own people in his hometown, Moree in the Central Region of Ghana from where he was sent to a fishing community in Liberia at the age of 12 to work.
Near-death experience
He recounted how at a point he was thrown into the high seas and left to die. According to him, he managed to swim till fishermen on another boat rescued him.
He said on the shore, he was maltreated and called an Ebola patient. Abaidoo said he suffered stigmatisation and rejection at the hands of the people and was refused food. “It was a life of suffering and pain,” he said.
At some point, he said he turned into a beggar, roaming the streets begging for food until he stowed away back to Ghana about two years ago.
Abaidoo was found by the Central and Western Fishmongers Improvement Association (CEWEFIA), an NGO which was conducting a survey on child trafficking in Moree.
CEWEFIA and the Sustainable Fisheries Management Programme of the United States Agency International Development, (USAID) and its partners, including the Daasgift, Development in Action Association, Hen Mpoano, SNV and Friends of the Nation, held a durbar at Moree, a fishing community near Cape Coast, to educate the community on curbing child trafficking.
It was also to educate them on the need to adopt more responsible fishing practices to help restore the depleting fishing stocks.
The programme is part of activities under a project to help improve governance of the sea resources and revamp the depleting fishery resources while impacting positively on the people whose lives depend on the sea resources.
Abaidoo, now a child trafficking advocate, narrated his story.
Research indicates that child trafficking in sectors, including agriculture, industry and service in Ghana was even more predominant than international child trafficking.
Ghanaian children, the research found, were also transported to neighbouring countries in West Africa, as well as to Europe and the Middle East, for forced labour which includes commercial sexual work.
Population
Moree is like any other fishing community, with a high number of children. The number is even likely to be higher than the average fishing community.
Everywhere, one finds scores of children in groups. Most of them walk about the community without proper clothing, while many others walk half naked.
According to information gathered from the residents, the average person has about five children.
Some have as many as 10 and continue to give birth and give them away.
Some of these parents give them out to stay with people to work. In return, they are given sums ranging between GH¢100 and GH¢200.
The children usually engage in hazardous work, mostly in Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia and in and around Yeji in Ghana.
Depleting fish resources
With the depleting fish resources, which the community mostly depends on, many are having a hard time managing their large families.
The Chief of Party of the SFMP of USAID, Mr Brian Crawford, said the project was also to help restore fish stocks which had declined to about 10 per cent of what it was 10 years ago.
He said the issue of child trafficking was known to be rampant in the Central Region, hence the USAID’s collaboration to fight the menace in the area.
The Executive Director of CEWEFIA, Mrs Victoria Churchill Koomson, said parents must plan their families to avoid giving their children away to work in hazardous and dangerous environments.
She said CEWEFIA would continue to promote the wellbeing of women and children, particularly those in the coastal communities.
The Chief fisherman of Moree, Nana Kwegya, said there were certainly cases of child trafficking in the community.
“There is a lot of poverty among the people and certainly there have been cases of child trafficking.”
There was a role play on the negative consequences of child trafficking and the need for parents to take their children to school and an emphasis on the need for the people to plan their families.
Expectation
CEWEFIA and USAID officials expect that after the sensitisation and the tears, the community would take a decision to adopt more responsible family planning methods and stop any form of child trafficking.
If they do not, the laws must be applied.
Trafficking Laws
In 2015, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection with support from the United Nations International Childrens Fund (UNICEF) launched the Human Trafficking Prohibition (Protection and Reintegration of Trafficked persons) Regulations, 2015, LI 2219.
The Act was to help the effective implementation of the Human Trafficking Act 2005, (Act 694) passed 10 years earlier.
The Act is to prevent and combat human trafficking, protect and support victims of trafficking, investigate and prosecute offenders of human trafficking, collaborate and promote cooperation among stakeholders and civil society.
Continuous sensitisation to human trafficking is crucial. But perpetrators must be made to face the law.
Family Planning
The Communications Officer with CEWEFFIA, Ms Hannah Antwi, said there was the need to use education on family planning as a way of helping to solve the problem.
She noted with concern the huge families that were worsening the hardship on the people.
Ms Antwi said under the project, five vulnerable households, including the Abaidoo family, had been given to new improved fish smoking stoves to afford them earn some income to manage the families.
With support from CEWEFIA, Abaidoo, now 17, is in Class Five, and says he is better off here.
He advised parents to work in order to take their children through school to prepare them emotionally and psychologically to be better adults.
NGO/Civil Society activities
Many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society groups are working to eliminate child trafficking but the fight is far from being over.
Many more children without slippers and many others without clothes listened while Abaidoo told his story to the durbar, hoping they would not have to go through what he went through.
