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Human trafficking rated third illicit
business in the world
Accra, Feb. 20, GNA - Statistics indicate that human
trafficking is rated the third most profitable illicit
business venture in the world aside drugs and prostitution.
This has resulted in the high number of children who have
been trafficked and transported from Afram Plains in the
Eastern, Yeji in the Brong Ahafo, and Atitekpo rpt Atitekpo
in the Volta Regions to neighbouring countries like The
Gambia and Côte d’Ivoire in particular, to engage in
hazardous occupation.
Mr Eric Okrah of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) office in
Accra disclosed this at a workshop on Monday organized by
the Association of People for Practical Life Education
(APPLE), an NGO, against child trafficking.
He said such children were made to engage in hard and
exploitative work, which affected their health and
well-being against the light work enshrined in the
Children's Act of 1998.
Mr. Okrah said perpetrators of this crime always acted under
the pretext of taking the children who were often under 16
years to school or taking proper care of them.
"Any action that tends to degrade the rights of the Ghanaian
child is abhorrent and must be considered as such and dealt
with," he added.
Mrs Susan Sabah, a child rights advocate with the Ghana NGO
Coalition on the Rights of the Child (GNCRC), who spoke on
awareness creation said there was still more work to be done
in the sensitization process, since more people were
ignorant of the laws on child trafficking.
She therefore called on the participants to make good the
information acquired to educate local people who engaged in
the practice. She cautioned them to be extra vigilant when
they went about their work in order to identify such
trafficked children and report them to the police.
Mrs. Sabah urged participants to use local information
centres to update their knowledge, as this would help them
in their education campaign.
The Executive Director of APPLE, Mr Jack Dawson, said the
workshop was organized for community co-coordinators to
boost their knowledge base and also expose them to realities
underlying child trafficking to help make them better
equipped for their work.
GNA
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