The Member of Parliament for Salaga South, Hajia Zuwera Mohammed Ibrahimah, has called on Parliament to help tackle the regulatory vacuum that allows child abuse to occur in schools.
She said that protecting children was not merely a legal obligation; Parliament had a responsibility to enact transformative policies to ensure every child thrived in an environment free from abuse.
Saying that words of condemnation were insufficient, she said, “We must translate our outrage into concrete reforms”.
“We must strengthen legal frameworks and enforcement that will bolster the capacity of law enforcement and judicial systems to investigate and prosecute cases of child abuse,” she said.
Zero tolerance
Presenting a statement on the worsening crisis of child abuse in Ghana on the floor of Parliament last Thursday, Hajia Ibrahimah, who is the Vice Chairperson on the Committee on Gender, Children and Social Welfare, said it was time for urgent system reform and zero tolerance.
She said without accountability, there could be no justice and without justice, there could be no deterrence.
“The prosecutions in all cases of child abuse must proceed with the full weight of the law. We must ask why our child protection systems failed to prevent these abuses, why victims and their families struggle to access support.
“Deterrence requires visible and consistent consequences. Let us create an environment where harming a child is simply too risky,” she said.
Emotional and physical abuse
Hajia Ibrahimah said despite Ghana’s comprehensive legislative framework-the Children’s Act, 1998 (Act 560) the Domestic Violence Act, 2007 (Act 732)- child abuse remained pervasive.
She expressed concern over the persistent and devastating scourge of child abuse that continued to plague society despite robust legislative frameworks and international commitments.
The MP cited the 2023 Ghana Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, which revealed that approximately 22 per cent of children aged one and 14 experienced violent discipline in Ghana, thus enduring physical and emotional abuse with alarming frequency.
Those violations, she said, contravened the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Ghana was a signatory.
“They fundamentally jeopardise the physical, psychological, emotional and social development of our future generation,” she said, citing several child abuse cases.
Abuse cases
Hajia Ibrahimah recalled that in June last year, a video surfaced on social media, depicting a 12-year-old child at New Ankasa, bound with nylon ropes to a roof and brutally beaten by three adults.
Again, she said on January 24 this year, an eight-year-old Jalila Abdul Jalil was abused by her housemistress at the St Olives Grammar School at Dodowa.
“This innocent child was allegedly flogged, accused of witchcraft and forced to immerse her legs in hot water-leaving her at grave risk of leg amputation,” she said.
She recalled how she personally visited Jalila and her family and witnessed first-hand the profound physical trauma and emotional devastation that child endured as well as the family’s anguish amid inadequate support.
The MP also described another incident of “unconscionable” child abuse that happened at the Trinity Methodist Preparatory School in Egyaa in the Central Region.
Two young siblings, a 10-year-old boy in class four and his class two sibling, aged eight, were subjected to severe punishment by their teacher identified as Ebenezer.
“According to their father, Moses Barnabas, the teacher administered 40 strokes of the cane to the elder child and 20 strokes to the younger as punishment for sitting on chairs arranged for a school programme.
She said the father found his children crying with reddened stripes across their arms and backs.
His complaints, she said, were met with unsatisfactory responses, compelling him to report the matter to the police.
“I took my children to school to be educated, not to be abused in this manner,” Hajia Ibrahimah quoted the father as saying.
The Salaga South further cited the North Legon incident in which a child was tied to a motorbike and dragged on the road.
The intervention of a “good Samaritan” saved that child, she said and commended the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Dr Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, who led a team from her ministry to visit the child.
