US embassy cable - 04ACCRA1417

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, Trafficking 
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