RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS ON TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS

UNCLAS ACCRA 000605 SIPDIS DEPT FOR G/TIP LINDA BROWN E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ASEC EAID ELAB GH KCRM KFRD KWMN PHUM PREF SMIG SUBJECT: RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS ON TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT FOR GHANA REF: A. ACCRA 00433 ¶B. E-MAIL FROM LINDA BROWN INL/G/TIP 3/08/05 ¶1. This message is keyed to questions raised (ref B) regarding post's draft 2005 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report (ref A). ¶2. Question: Please state the number of trafficking victims processed through Accra's shelters/children's homes in 2004. Ghana's Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment reports that its single operational shelter saved 28 trafficked children during 2004. The children, all housed at the Osu Children's Home in Accra, ranged in ages from 8 to 17 years of age. Seven other trafficking victims at the shelter had reached the age of majority by the time they were rescued. Two more entered the shelter in January 2005. Among these 37 victims were 11 Togolese, one Nigerian and one Sierra Leonean. The remainder were Ghanaian. Twenty-two have already been reunited with their families. In the Greater Accra Region, a second shelter has been renovated and will begin accepting children this year at Medina near Legon. ¶3. Question: Please state the total number of child trafficking victims rescued in 2004, both for internal and international trafficking. The Government of Ghana keeps no official statistics of the number of trafficking victims rescued. However, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the GOG documented a total of 590 child victims being rescued in ¶2004. Of these 590 victims, 18 were internationally trafficked Ghanaian children returned to Ghana and 12 were foreign children rescued in Ghana. The International Organization for Migration (IOM),with GOG support, rescued 544 trafficked children in 2004 of which 430 have been successfully reintegrated into their families. All of these children were Ghanaian. In addition, 18 internationally trafficked Ghanaian children were returned in 2004 (12 from The Gambia and 6 from Nigeria). ¶4. Question: Is the arrest of Chinese national Lin Xianghan truly considered a trafficking case, or is it being treated as alien smuggling? On February 21, the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) arrested Lin Xianglan, a 45-year-old Chinese national who conspired with her husband in the People's Republic of China to smuggle Chinese to Ghana through a fraudulent business she set up in the Ghana Free Zones. These aliens were promised that they would be eventually taken to the U.S. in exchange for payments of 10,000 USD. Instead several ended up working on farms in the Volta Region where they were told they should work until their departure could be arranged. GIS deported Xianglan and all of the Chinese aliens involved in the matter in early March. GIS Director Elizabeth Adjei confirmed to us that this was a case of alien smuggling, not trafficking, as was reported in the local press. YATES