FIGHTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING: SOME SUCCESS, BUT

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ACCRA 001417

SIPDIS

DEPT PASS TO DRL/ROBERT ZUEHLKE, PRM/SONIA DENTZEL, G/TIP
TO NICK LEVINTOW

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ELAB KWMN PHUM SMIG
SUBJECT: FIGHTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING: SOME SUCCESS, BUT
STILL AN UPHILL BATTLE


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SUMMARY
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1. The scope of the problem of child trafficking in Ghana is
difficult to ascertain due to a lack of concise data and an
accurate census of impacted areas. NGOs close to the issue
estimate the number of children working in hazardous
conditions, particularly in the Volta River fishing villages,
as being well into the thousands. The embassy's PolOff
traveled with the International Organization for Migration
(IOM) from June 21-24 to observe their project, funded by
PRM, that is working to rescue children from the fishing
villages, reunite them with their parents in their home
villages, and provide material assistance to parents and
fishermen while reintegrating the children into schools in
their communities. Although the project is enjoying modest
success thus far, at this stage it is winning battles but not
the war. More needs to be done on the legislative and
prosecutorial front to curb the problem in Ghana. End summary.

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300 AMONG THOUSANDS: WINNING BATTLES
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2. On June 21, PolOff traveled with IOM to Yeji, a fishing
town on the northeast side of the Volta River in the Brong
Ahafo region. IOM has established a temporary transit camp
there, where children they have rescued from island fishing
villages near Yeji receive food, counseling, medical
assistance, and prepare to be reunited with their parents.
Previous groups of children have stayed at the transit camp
for just two weeks. The most recent group of 72 children to
be rescued stayed for a month, and IOM plans to keep future
groups at the camp for a month as it better enables the
children to be rehabilitated.


3. Local government officials have thus far been supportive
of IOM's project to rescue the trafficked children. Toward
that end, the Yeji District Chief Executive authorized IOM to
use an abandoned government guesthouse as a transit camp. IOM
told PolOff that in December 2004, the government will
reclaim the guesthouse to renovate it and use it for its
original purpose. At that time, IOM will have to find new
quarters for its transit camp, a prospect which may move the
rehabilitation project to the south of Ghana, closer to the
children's home villages. Doing so would have the added
benefit of moving the children to an area where their native
language is more prevalent (people in the Yeji area speak a
different language than people in the southern Volta Region
where the children are from),as well as closer to their
parents and IOM headquarters in Accra. Funding for the new
transit camp is not yet secured.

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"BUYING" PARENTS WHO "SELL" THEIR CHILDREN?
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4. A somewhat contentious aspect of the IOM project involves
their provision of material assistance to both the receiving
fishermen and the sending parents. Other NGOs who have
established projects to 'rescue' children - notably, the
African Center for Human Development (ACHD),which has
projects in other areas along the Volta River - stand firm on
the principle that people who "sell" their children and the
fishermen who "buy" cheap labor at the expense of children's
health should not be rewarded with provisions such as cattle,
chicken coops, and piggeries (in the case of the fishermen,
with whom IOM establishes contracts to encourage them to
develop alternative business ventures) or maize, groundnuts,
smoked fish, and soap (in the case of the parents, to whom
IOM provides assistance in the form of provisional goods and
micro-credit loan assistance through rural banks). (Note: The
terms 'buying' and 'selling' have a continuum of meanings;
typically, the parents and the fishermen (who are often
distant relatives) negotiate contracts whereby the fishermen
give the parents a small amount of money to use the children
for varying lengths of time ranging from one year to several,
though often these become permanent arrangements. End note.)


5. In reality, however, the provision of material assistance
to the parents and fishermen seems to be the only approach
that has thus far ensured that children will not be
re-trafficked soon after they have been rescued, as has been
the case in the ACHD project. While IOM has reintegrated far
fewer children to date than ACHD (IOM has rescued 298
children, and ACHD claims to have rescued over 800),ACHD
openly admits that many of their children have been
re-trafficked and they are frustrated with the lack of
cooperation of both the sending and receiving villages. In
some cases, ACHD's method of rescuing children by forceful
intervention (rather than through the voluntary commitments
that IOM negotiates) has alienated entire villages and local
police from cooperating with the effort to assist the
children. Meanwhile, the long-term success of IOM's project
remains to be seen as the follow-up monitoring and evaluation
phases of their project are currently in progress.


6. In meetings with the fishermen, parents, traditional and
local government leaders, PolOff found that while many people
say they want the problem eradicated, there is still wide
cultural acceptance of the practice. Poverty is widely and
accurately cited as the main reason for the problem, but NGO
leaders close to the issue also cite others - polygamy, lack
of family planning, the low status of children in a very
hierarchical society, and greed. For example, at the ceremony
on June 23 to reunite children with the parents who had
trafficked them, PolOff observed that one of the parents who
was reunited with six of her children was the Queen Mother -
the village chief's wife, who is considered a person of high
status and relative wealth in a very poor village.


7. For the fishermen's part, they will quickly point to the
plentiful supply of cheap labor that parents are willing to
supply them. On June 22, PolOff met with fishermen from one
very remote island village who also blame the damming of the
Volta River in the 1960s for 'forcing' entire villages who
once depended on oyster farming in the south (rendered less
fruitful by the dam) to migrate to the north, where the labor
supply is less plentiful, to engage in the fishing trade.
Justifications such as these abound, as does chronic poverty
in Ghana.


8. At this stage, it is difficult to determine the depth of
support IOM has garnered from their local counterparts.
Certainly, there are some parents and fishermen who are
dedicated to improving their own situations and returning the
children to their home villages so they can go to school and
resume (or, in some cases with the very young children,
begin) a normal life. But there are at least equal, if not
greater, numbers of parents who seem more enthused about the
financial assistance they receive through this project than
about being reunited with their children. While IOM will pay
the children's school fees and provide school uniforms for
the first year of their reintegration, whether the parents
will or can demonstrate long-term commitment to supporting
their own children remains to be seen. In a country where
poverty and polygamy are not going away anytime soon, and
more children that cannot be supported will be produced,
parents may see no other alternative than to re-traffick
their children.


9. One area where IOM has had clear success is in sensitizing
communities about the issue. In villages where 'child
trafficking' is a foreign concept and the practice has
traditionally not been viewed as inherently wrong, it is a
sign of progress that increasing numbers of parents,
fishermen, and traditional leaders now seem to understand
that this is a practice they should not endorse or engage in.

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MATERIAL ASSISTANCE TO FISHERMEN/PARENTS: SOME ABUSES OBSERVED
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10. Most troubling is the possibility that well-intentioned
projects, such as those that IOM and ACHD are implementing,
will be exploited by poor fishermen and parents. IOM has
devised forms to collect more concise data and to track the
progress of children they assist. Both parents and fishermen
sign contracts and provide information about how many
children they sold/bought, for how much, and the length of
time for which the agreement was intended. Given that project
benefits are awarded based upon admission of involvement in
trafficking, there is a moral hazard: some people will lie to
reap program benefits. This has already happened in the ACHD
project, which provided school fees for rescued children; in
some cases, children who had never been trafficked were
"rescued" by ACHD based on faked confessions by parents. In
light of the grinding poverty many communities face, these
programs will generate some deceit and opportunism.


11. At a ceremony held on June 23 in New Bakpa in the Volta
Region, 70 children (2 of the children ran away in Yeji the
day before the reunification) were reunited with their
parents who had previously trafficked them to fishermen in
the Yeji area (New Bakpa is a 10-hour bus ride from Yeji).
PolOff observed the ceremony, held with much fanfare and
celebration, to bring the children home. Amidst the dancing,
singing, and praises to both IOM and the USG for bringing the
children home - all of which was publicized by two local news
crews covering the event - there were in fact a diversity of
reactions on the part of the parents, many of whom are single
parents with other children. Some seemed genuinely contrite
for their actions and warmly welcomed their children back
into the fold. A few others seemed much more interested in
the loan assistance meeting (to take place the next morning)
than the child reunification ceremony. A large majority,
however, looked ambivalent - happy, on the one hand, to see
their children again but worried, on the other, that they
will not be able to support them in their impoverished
conditions, and that IOM support for one year simply won't be
enough.

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PENDING LEGISLATION: TWO YEARS AND RUNNING
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12. A fundamental problem is the lack of an anti-trafficking
law, which has been in progress for well over two years in
Ghana. A draft bill is currently sitting at the Attorney
General's office, waiting for the Ministry of Women's and
Children's Affairs (MOWAC, the ministry with the mandate to
submit the bill) to put it before Parliament. Citing bad
timing on the parliamentary calendar (not to mention
presidential and parliamentary elections later this year),
MOWAC says the bill is likely to be tabled until 2005.

13. Some GoG officials cite the normal and lengthy process as
the reason for the delay. NGO leaders involved in the
National Task Force to create the bill, however, point to a
dispute between MOWAC and MMDE over ownership of the bill.


14. The Mission continues to urge its GoG counterparts to
move the anti-trafficking legislation forward. It has used
the release of the 2004 TIP report, workshops, meetings, and
other opportunities, to highlight what the USG sees as steps
forward on Ghana's part but also to remind them that pushing
ahead on the legislative and prosecutorial fronts will be
critical in the next year.

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COMMENT
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15. The monitoring trip with IOM yielded mixed observations.
On the one hand, IOM is the most structured, mobilized, and
(so far) successful program working in both sending and
receiving villages and has produced measurable results. They
are rescuing, rehabilitating, and reintegrating children who
would otherwise probably spend their formative years in
hazardous working conditions with no access to education or
medical care. On the other, the apparent apathy and
indifference expressed by some parents at their children's
return reveal that traditional practices and attitudes run
deep and are unlikely to be eradicated quickly. So long as
poverty remains a reality in rural Ghana, projects such as
IOM's will continue to be a short-term fix that can only do
so much. End Comment.
Yates