12 September 2003

Trafficking Victims Released in Ghana, September 11, 2003

(U.S.-assisted effort frees 173 children from indentured servitude)

By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- A new life began for 173 children in a town called Yeji September 11. In the Brong Afafo region of Ghana, the boys, aged 3 to 14, leave a life as indentured laborers in the fishing industry on Lake Volta. The fishermen who held the children --the so-called "slave masters" -- released them to representatives of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and local nongovernmental organizations who will soon return them to their families.

"They are part of a larger group of 1002 children due to be released," said IOM spokesperson Jean Philippe Chauzy in a statement issued from IOM's Geneva headquarters. The U.S. State Department helped fund the project with a $350,000 grant.

The youngsters had been sold into indentured servitude by their own families unaware that their children would be living and working in "punishing conditions." IOM Project Director Dr. Ernest Taylor has been working in Ghana since April 2002 to free the children. In the Bureau of International Information's June 2003 publication "Responses to Human Trafficking," Taylor wrote, "Working in conditions of forced labor, lacking any familial affection or nurturing, they are traumatized and dispirited."

The children work long hours on the boats, living in crowded conditions without proper nutrition or education. The fishermen sometimes send them diving below to loosen tangled nets, and many have drowned, according to the IOM.

The September 11 release of this first group of children was preceded by a long period of preparation by Taylor and his partners in the project. Many of the children did not remember where they came from or who their families were, so identification of them and their families was a critical step in the process. Those released into the hands of the project managers now will rejoin their families in the next week or so, according to the IOM Chief of Mission in Accra Antonio Polosa.

"Another 400-plus will follow (those released September 11), most likely during the next 6 to 8 weeks," said Polosa in response to an e-mail inquiry from the Washington File. "We expect that following the first releases even more fishermen will be considering to give up this practice and soliciting IOM program services."

Polosa estimated that there are between 2000 and 3000 more children working in indentured labor on Lake Volta outside the region targeted in this IOM project.

Providing the fishermen with alternatives to the use of child labor in order to induce their agreement to release the children has been a key element in the IOM project. "Interestingly, most of the fishermen who have accepted to release the children have decided to give up fishing on Lake Volta, and to engage in other activities, such as cattle and pig-rearing," said Taylor in an IOM statement. "IOM has provided them with training and helped them through the purchase of livestock and essential equipment."

The "placement of children" has been a longstanding traditional practice in Ghana, especially for poor families struggling to provide food and clothing for their children. No law prohibits the practice. "In the last 40 years or so, however, traffickers seeking only profits have exploited the crushing poverty of the region and corrupted this traditional practice," Taylor wrote in his June 2003 article.

In attempting to locate the families of the fishing children, Taylor found they were frightened about how they would care for the youngsters upon their return. So helping the families and the children in their reunification is another important part of the process. With a variety of assistance and micro-credit programs, Taylor wrote, "We must help them find a way to bring some income to their families to sustain them."

Preventing revictimization is probably the most difficult challenge faced by IOM in its various projects around the world to liberate trafficking victims, according to Marco Gramegna, the head of IOM's counter-trafficking service. "We can't send these boys -- or any trafficking victims -- back to the same situation," he said in an interview included in "Responses to Human Trafficking." "We have to empower them in a different situation....The children need to recognize that they have other choices in life, which would occur through education, or perhaps employment and education."

Human trafficking in West Africa is by no means confined to the fishing industry on Lake Volta. "In West Africa, you can find different levels of trafficking for different objectives going from sexual exploitation, labor, domestic work, begging, criminality and a mixture of all that," said Gramegna.

Human trafficking is a form of criminal activity that is notoriously difficult to quantify, but Gramegna estimates that there are tens of thousands of victims in West Africa each year.

The U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report issued in June estimates that between 800,00-900,000 persons are trafficked across international borders each year.