Shea Nutrition Value Chain Vegetable production in Ghana
ICCO works in many countries in West Africa to develop the Shea Value chain and reduce poverty in ...
Despite the fact that Ghana is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 182 and has passed various legislation such as the Children Act and the Human Trafficking Act among others, the country has been identified by the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report as a source, transit and distribution country for human trafficking. Majority of the victims are trafficked from northern Ghana to the cities to be hired as carriers of goods, house-helps and commercial sexual exploitation. Poverty and low literacy rates in villages are major factors that cause parents to expose their children to traffickers. Unable to support their families, parents use their children as a source of income by selling them into forced labour or sex slavery in the city. Once the children arrived in the city, they lack adequate skills to support themselves, so they remain with their captors. Those who escape captivity have no means to support themselves. Female child workers abound in the urban cities and are so visible even to the casual visitor to the city cannot miss their spectacle.
From the analysis of the problem in the preceding section it is clear that the major root causes of the supply and demand for exploitative child labour and child trafficking include;
1. Chronic food insecurity and inadequate alternative livelihood opportunities resulting from crop failures and lack of appropriate employable skills,
2. Entrenched and outdated cultural practices such as fosterage that discriminate against females and exclude girls from accessing education and other decent employment opportunities,
3. Widespread ignorance about laws prohibiting the abuse and trafficking of children, especially girls through forced marriages.