US embassy cable - 05ACCRA433

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 06 ACCRA 000433 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPT FOR G/TIP/RACHEL YOUSEY, G, INL, DRL, PRM, IWI, AND 
AF/RSA, PLEASE PASS TO USAID 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KCRM, PHUM, KWMN, SMIG, KFRD, ASEC, PREF, ELAB, GH, Trafficking 
SUBJECT: GHANA 2005 TRAFFICKING-IN-PERSONS REPORT (PART TWO 
OF TWO) 
 
REF: A. 04 STATE 273089 
 
     B. ACCRA 0432 
 
THIS IS THE SECOND OF A TWO-PART CABLE SUBMISSION IN RESPONSE 
TO REF A. 
 
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Para 20: Investigation and Prosecution of Traffickers 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
A. (U) There is no specific provision in Ghanaian law 
outlawing trafficking in persons.  There are laws against 
slavery, prostitution, rape (or child rape, termed 
"defilement"), use of underage labor, manufacture of 
fraudulent documentation, etc.  Traffickers are prosecuted 
under these statutes.  However, the final draft of an 
anti-trafficking law is currently ready for consideration by 
Cabinet, and will undergo revision before it is put to 
parliament for a vote. Due to preparations for national 
elections in December 2004, movement on this (and other) 
legislation was delayed in the few months prior to elections. 
A Cabinet reshuffling took place in early 2005, including new 
appointments at the three key ministries involved with 
anti-trafficking issues. Nevertheless, the MOWAC and MMYE 
submitted their comments on the bill to the Attorney General 
in early 2005. The AG was reviewing the ministries' comments 
before putting the bill to Cabinet for consideration as of 
March 2005. With the elections over and a new government in 
place, GoG and NGO stakeholders predict the bill, which is 
not view as controversial, will pass by mid-2005. 
 
B. (U) There are currently no specific penalties for 
trafficking, but penalties for related offenses range from 
six months to 25 years (see above). In the final draft of the 
trafficking legislation, the penalties for trafficking or the 
harboring of a trafficked person include minimum sentences of 
five years in prison. Additionally, a person who fails to 
dutifully inform law enforcement authorities about 
trafficking will face fines and/or up to a year in jail. 
 
C. (U) In June 1998, Parliament passed comprehensive 
legislation to protect women and children's rights. The bill 
doubled the mandatory sentence for rape, making it punishable 
by 5 to 25 years in prison. It also banned the practice of 
ritual servitude, criminalized indecent assault and forced 
marriage, and raised the punishments for defilement, incest, 
and prostitution involving children. 
 
D. (U) Traffickers have been prosecuted under statutes listed 
in para 20 A. Penalties imposed range from several months to 
many years in prison. Sentences for rape or defilement, for 
example, are often 10 to 15 years in length. Precise data on 
prosecutions for trafficking is not available because 
information on sentencing of traffickers is not kept 
separately from other data on sentencing for rape, 
kidnapping, and other offenses for which traffickers can be 
prosecuted. (See also para 18 G). 
 
E. (U) Within Ghana, brokers or recruiters procure children 
from rural areas and move them to the locations where they 
will work (see para 18 B).  These recruiters may move as many 
as ten children at one time. These traffickers tend to be 
freelance operators. There are no reports available about 
where profits from trafficking are being channeled. It is 
generally presumed that domestic traffickers keep all profits. 
 
F. (SBU) Local law enforcement does not use any special 
techniques in the investigation of trafficking. There are 
several cases that involved detection of trafficking by law 
enforcement authorities through tip-offs by local residents, 
and arrests have been made (under the related offenses 
mentioned above). 
 
The GoG actively investigates cases of trafficking. Interpol 
reports that, in 2004, there were six trafficking cases 
investigated through Interpol, involving a total of 18 
children and eight adults. In all but two cases, 
investigations were ongoing at year's end. In one case, the 
trafficker managed to escape and in the other case, the 
trafficker was being held in Nigerian custody (see below this 
para). There were two high-profile cases that highlighted the 
efforts by Interpol and GoG agencies to identify children who 
had been trafficked to other countries. In April 2004, 
through the coordinated efforts of the GoG and the Government 
of The Gambia, twelve Ghanaian girls were identified and 
brought home (see para 18 B for more information about this 
trafficking route). According to Interpol, a local Ghanaian 
informant tipped off UNICEF, which then in turn contacted 
Interpol-Ghana about the case. Interpol-Ghana contacted 
Interpol-Gambia to verify the accuracy of the report. Upon 
verification of the report, the Department of Social Welfare 
worked with Gambian officials to repatriate the twelve girls. 
 
In a second case in November 2004, Interpol and the 
Department of Social Welfare received information from a 
local informant about six girls who had been trafficked to 
Nigeria. After verifying the case details, the Ghanaian 
embassy in Nigeria assisted in bringing the girls to the 
Ghana-Togo border in late December 2004. An Interpol official 
brought the girls from the border to Accra, at which point 
the Department of Social Welfare became responsible for 
rehabilitating and reintegrating them. (Note: GoG authorities 
involved in this case note that the Nigerian authorities were 
uncooperative in helping to repatriate the girls. The 
Nigerian woman accused of trafficking is currently in 
Nigerian custody and no information has been shared with the 
GoG about her case status). 
 
The Interpol official told Emboff that (once an informant's 
report has been verified) the Interpol official sometimes 
pays the informant out of her own pocket as a reward for the 
information. She notes that after some informants have come 
to her, they find themselves at risk because traffickers have 
threatened them. For example, she has not heard from the 
informant in the Nigerian case since he initially approached 
her. 
 
G. (U) The National Plan to Combat Trafficking includes a 
training component for police and immigration officials. The 
Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) attempts to identify 
traffickers and trafficked persons through the detection of 
fraudulent documentation. The GIS has received training from 
the USG and other foreign countries on fraud in the past, 
which has been well-received. Many government officials and 
law enforcement agencies have attended training sponsored by 
local and international NGOs in the past year. 
 
H. (U) See para 20 F for information about cross-border 
cooperation. 
 
I. (U) There have been no extraditions of persons charged 
with trafficking in other countries. The Department of Social 
Welfare notes that although it does not trust the prosecution 
efforts of the Nigerian government in the December 2004 case 
(see para 20 F), it cannot make an extradition appeal for 
this woman since Ghana does not yet have an anti-trafficking 
law. (See also para 18 H for details of a USG extradition 
case and the GoG's response to it). 
 
J. (U) There is no evidence of government involvement in or 
tolerance of trafficking, on a local or institutional level. 
 
K. (U) See para 18 H. 
 
L. (U) Ghana does not have an identified problem with child 
sex tourism. However, in October 2004, ILO-Ghana said that 
information was reaching its offices to indicate that 
Ghanaian children have been involved in internet pornography. 
In October 2004, a Dutch national was convicted on charges of 
filming Ghanaian girls for internet pornography. He was 
sentenced to fines and jail time, as well as immediate 
deportation after finishing his sentence. The accused first 
entered Ghana in 1988. After ongoing surveillance of the 
man's travel and activities, the Ghana Immigration Service 
conducted a sting operation after a tip-off about the man's 
return to Ghana in October 2004. 
 
M. (U) Ghana's status on the ILO conventions and UN protocols 
are as follows: 
 
ILO Convention 182 - Ratified, 6/13/00 
ILO Convention 29 - Ratified, 5/20/57 
ILO Convention 105 - Ratified, 12/15/58 
UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the 
Child (CRC) on the sale of children, child prostitution, and 
child pornography - Signed but not ratifed, 9/24/03 
UN Option Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish 
Trafficking in Persons, especially against Women and Children 
- Not signed 
--------------------------------------------- 
Para 21: Protection and Assistance to Victims 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
A. (U) The GoG does provide resources for victims of 
trafficking (see para 18 G). In many cases, the authorities 
do try to reunite trafficked and abused children with their 
families (see para 20 F). NGOs have sought to provide 
services the police and social services cannot by 
establishing a few crisis centers. However, as awareness of 
the problem grows and trafficking victims seek assistance, 
the limited resources for providing such assistance become 
more strapped. According to the Department of Social Welfare, 
the two children's homes it runs in Accra are stretched 
beyond capacity. The head of the trafficking unit at Interpol 
notes that these two facilities, which are used as temporary 
shelters for children who have been rescued before they are 
repatriated, are more suitable for younger children than for 
some of the older children who have been brought back. She 
underscored the need for appropriate space for children and 
'victim-friendly' accommodation. WAJU opened up two new 
offices in the Greater Accra Region in 2004 to help manage 
the overwhelming caseload that WAJU-Accra has been handling. 
(Note: WAJU handles a wide variety of cases, such as domestic 
violence, rape, defilement and child neglect, as well as 
trafficking. End note). 
 
The Department of Social Welfare, WAJU, and Interpol all 
predict that resources for such space will come with passage 
of the trafficking legislation. In the pending 
anti-trafficking legislation, the Department of Social 
Welfare has the mandate to rescue, rehabilitate, and 
reintegrate victims, with the assistance of police, NGO, and 
others. As the Attorney General wrote in the introduction to 
the draft legislation that was completed in 2004: "The 
rehabilitation of victims is crucial to their re-integration 
and to that end, the Department of Social Welfare and the 
National Vocational Training Institute are to provide victims 
with employable skills, facilitated with start up capital 
from the Trafficking Fund. Compensation may be ordered by the 
court for the victim and any person who causes injury may 
also be ordered to pay compensation to the injured person. In 
order to facilitate the welfare of victims, a Trafficking 
Rehabilitation Fund is established. The object of the Fund is 
towards health needs, skills training, family tracing and 
other matters connected with the rehabilitation and 
re-integration of victims. The management of the Fund is to 
be under the auspices of the Ministry of Women's and 
Children's Affairs." 
 
B. (U) See para 19 E and para 18 G. 
 
C. (U) If they are arrested, the victims of international 
trafficking are prosecuted on an occasional, case-by-case 
basis, for offenses such as possession of altered travel 
documents. 
 
D. (U) The GoG does not provide specific protection for 
victims of trafficking beyond those available to all crime 
victims or witnesses. As a general note (for all detainees), 
prisons in Ghana are very overcrowded and suspects are often 
detained for prolonged periods of time as a result of an 
overloaded judiciary. 
 
E. (U) The GoG does not have an adequate system in place for 
victim interviewing to assist with the investigation and 
prosecution of trafficking. Efforts to work with victims for 
information-gathering and investigative purposes are hampered 
by a lack of a formal communication systems between agencies 
with different roles in the prevention, prosecution, and 
protection stages. 
 
F. (U) See para 21 D. 
 
G. (U) The GoG does not provide specialized training for 
government officials in recognizing trafficking and in the 
provision of assistance to trafficked victims. However, it 
has taken part in trainings conducted by the ILO. The GoG 
does work with its embassies and consulates in other 
countries on trafficking issues, although on a limited, 
case-related basis (see para 20 F). 
 
H. (U) Through the Department of Social Welfare, the 
government is able to provide some counseling and shelter to 
victims of trafficking. It also provides some start-up 
assistance when trafficked children are repatriated to their 
home communities. 
 
I. (U) Several NGOs, both local and international, work with 
trafficking victims. The International Organization for 
Migration (IOM) took the lead in 2004 with its nationwide 
project to rescue, rehabilitate, and reintegrate children who 
had been trafficked (mainly from the south) to fishing 
villages in the northeast along the Volta River. The IOM, 
with GoG in-kind assistance (see para 18 G), provides 
counseling and medical care to trafficking victims for two 
months before assisting them back to their home villages. 
Upon their return, the IOM provides micro-credit assistance 
to parents to help prevent re-trafficking. The IOM also 
provides support for one year with the children's school 
feeds and school uniforms and supplies. The IOM project also 
provides micro-credit assistance to fisherman who agree to 
release the trafficked children, to enable the fisherman to 
explore alternatives sources of income that would reduce the 
reliance on cheap labor for their fishing work. As of March 
2005, 544 children have been rescued through this project. Of 
these, 430 have already been reintegrated in their home 
villages. The remaining children were still in the 
rehabilitation camp as of March 2005. 
 
The African Centre for Human Development (ACHD), Save the 
Children UK, Children in Need, Action Aid, Catholic Action 
for Street Children, the Gender and Human Rights 
Documentation Center, Catholic Relief Services, Street Girls 
Aid, ILO/IPEC and UNICEF all work in the areas of child labor 
and support for street children.  These organizations, as 
well as the University of Ghana's Center for Social Policy 
Studies, conduct studies into trafficking as part of their 
broader agenda, perform some rescue operations for street 
kids, provide training and education for victims of 
trafficking and abuse, and in some cases, assist with family 
reunification. The ACHD project has met with some failure in 
that many of the children they helped repatriate were 
re-trafficked, as a result of minimal post-rehabilitation 
follow-up. 
 
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Heroes 
------ 
 
3. Post would like to submit the following two nominations as 
heroes in the fight against trafficking-in-persons. Both 
nominees have been vetted through post's Political office and 
Consular CLASS system. 
 
- ERIC APPIAH OKRAH, ILO/IPEC: Eric, a Ghanaian national, is 
one of Ghana's foremost leaders in the effort to monitor and 
combat trafficking-in-persons. In his capacity as the 
National Program Coordinator for Combatting Child Trafficking 
in West and Central Africa, Eric was highly instrumental in 
coordinating the National Task Force's efforts to finalize 
draft legislation for an anti-trafficking bill. He has worked 
tirelessly, both publicly and behind the scenes with key 
individuals in the government, to fine-tune the legislation 
and to encourage its passage. Eric is actively engaged with 
all players on the anti-trafficking front in Ghana - from the 
smallest local NGO to the ministers for Women's and 
Children's Affairs and Manpower, Youth, and Employment. He 
has worked closely with the Attorney General's office to 
clarify the language in the anti-trafficking legislation 
throughout the past two years. In July 2004, Eric gave a 
comprehensive briefing to USG officials visiting Ghana on the 
nature and status of human trafficking in Ghana. He is widely 
known in the NGO community as an expert on the subject, and 
has applied his expertise to a number of NGO and government 
programs and initiatives. In addition to his efforts on the 
anti-trafficking front, Eric is also a lead interlocutor on 
the child labor portfolio, which has some overlap with 
trafficking issues in Ghana. In the past year, he has 
traveled throughout Ghana conducting ILO child labor and 
forced labor workshops and always endeavors to use these 
workshops as an opportunity to raise awareness of child 
trafficking. 
 
- JOSEPH RISPOLI, IOM: Joseph, an American citizen, stands 
out in the effort to rescue, rehabilitate, and reintegrate 
trafficked children in Ghana. As the countertrafficking 
program manager in Ghana, he has coordinated the effort by 
IOM to identify source and destination villages involved in 
child trafficking. Joseph has led the program to find 
children who have been trafficked from the south to the 
northeastern fishing villages along the Volta River. IOM's 
Yeji fishing village project has enjoyed support from 
community leaders, traditional rulers, district-level 
government, and the central government in Accra largely due 
to Joseph's ongoing efforts to sensitize and educate key 
individuals about the problem of child trafficking. With the 
support of his field staff, Joseph has made remarkable 
inroads in sensitizing communities about trafficking, where 
previously there was great resistance to changing this 
entrenched 'cultural tradition'. Although he is based in 
Accra, Joseph spends the majority of his time in the field, 
actively reaching out to his project partners and monitoring 
the children's status in the villages, at the rehabilitation 
camps, and after their return to their home villages. He 
views long-term evaluation of returned children's welfare as 
a top priority. In July 2004, a team of visiting USG 
officials witnessed first-hand the impact Joseph's hard work 
has had on a community in the Central Region. The members of 
this team were unanimous in their praise for the work that 
Joseph has spearheaded through IOM. There is no other 
individual in Ghana who works so closely with this issue in 
the field who exhibits such persistence, patience, concern, 
and focused effort in rescuing, rehabilitating, and 
reintegrating trafficked children. Joseph is truly a hero in 
the fight against trafficking-in-persons and serves as a 
model to his IOM countertrafficking program colleagues around 
the world. 
 
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Best Practices 
-------------- 
 
4. (U) Post submits the following as a 'best practice' for 
the 2005 TIP report: 
 
"Involving Civil Society in Developing Legislation" 
 
Ghana has served as a model for effective involvement of 
civil society groups in developing and drafting its 
anti-trafficking legislation. Since the National Task Force 
was established in 2002 under the ECOWAS Protocol, the 
Government of Ghana and a wide range of civil society groups 
have met regularly to work on its primary task of drafting 
anti-trafficking legislation to be submitted before 
Parliament. This task was successfully completed in 2004. The 
effort began with just a few interested individuals within 
the government and civil society, but grew to incorporate 
NGOs, international organizations, several ministries, and 
media representatives. The National Task Force met regularly 
throughout the drafting stages, inviting donor countries' 
input to their seminars and workshops. The process was 
transparent and allowed for press coverage of the ongoing 
developments involving the draft legislation. Although the 
involvement of greater numbers of people and organizations 
may have slowed down the overall process, it resulted in more 
informed, well thought-out legislation that adequately 
answers the challenges 'on the ground'. It is also an 
indication that Ghana's developing democracy provides an 
effective framework for legislation to be devised with key 
input from those working at the grassroots level. This effort 
to bring all key players to the decision-making table was 
remarkably inclusive, and it is a 'best practice' that other 
countries who are in the early stages of drafting 
anti-trafficking legislation can learn from. We further 
commend the National Task Force for acknowledging the hard 
work on the judicial and prosecutorial fronts that will 
follow passage of the legislation. 
 
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Point of Contact 
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5. (U) Embassy POC for this report is PolOff Brad Stilwell; 
telephone (233-21)-775-348, ext. 4239; fax (233-21)-776-008. 
YATES