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From Child Labor “Problem” to Human Trafficking “Crisis”: Child Advocacy and Anti-Trafficking Legislation in Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2010

Benjamin N. Lawrance
Affiliation:
Rochester Institute of Technology

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between multidimensional child advocacy campaigns and the enactment of Ghana's Human Trafficking Act (2005). I argue that while child advocacy has a rich history, the diffuse labor-oriented advocacy characteristic of the 1990s failed to articulate an achievable goal. Child labor advocacy was impotent because the diverse agencies involved adopted different positions about the permissibility of child labor. By contrast, the anti-trafficking initiatives of the early 2000s focused narrowly on legislative remedy and formulated a discourse of “crisis.” An anti-trafficking coalition built on an international regulation model that emerged from the cocoa industry. As agents of social and political change, domestic, regional, and foreign nongovernmental organizations and intergovernmental organizations played important roles in shaping debates and framing new law. The Ghanaian law, however, is of limited effectiveness because it ignores autochthonous social practices with historically rich traditions, and it enjoins a narrow, economic model for the proliferation of trafficking.

Type
Shifting Boundaries between Free and Unfree Labor
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2010

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References

NOTES

The author is the Berber B. Constable Jr. Endowed Professor of International Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He wishes to thank Carolyn Brown, Richard Roberts, Ruby Andrew, Estelle Appiah, Omnia El Shakry, Marcel van der Linden, Allison Miller, the Yale University Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, and the many Ghanaians who assisted in the research for this article.

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141. ILO/IPEC and the Subregional Project on Combating the Trafficking of Children in West and Central Africa, “Local Capacity Building for the Prevention of Cross-border Child Trafficking in 30 Border Communities between Ghana and Togo and between Benin and Togo,” (January 2004), 2.

142. Atuguba et al., “Review,” 8. Also, UNICEF, “La Traite d'Enfants en Afrique de l'Ouest: Reponse Politiques,” (Florence, 2002), 5.

143. Ark Foundation (http://www.arkfoundationgh.org/ last accessed May 19, 2010); Parent and Child Foundation (http://www.parentandchildfoundation.org/ last accessed May 19, 2010).

144. R. A. Atuguba et al., (Legal Resources Centre-Ghana), “Review of Trafficking-Related Legislation and Policies in Ghana,” (2005), 42.

145. Atuguba et al., “Review,” 43: “Trafficked women and children are usually sold or delivered into servitude by their parents.” See also Ouensavi and Kielland, “Child Labor Migration,” 31.

146. The best example comes from neighboring Togo. Plan-Togo, “For the Price of a Bike,” 20.

147. See B. Dabiré, “Le confiage des enfants, alternative à une transition de crise?” (Paris, 2001): 407–21.

148. S. Sarpong, “Ghana: Soaring Cases of Child Labour,” http://www.newsfromafrica.org/newsfromafrica/articles/art_1034.html (last accessed May 19, 2010).

149. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1560392.stm (last accessed May 19, 2010); http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1281391.stm (last accessed May 19, 2010); http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/412628.stm (last accessed May 19, 2010); Le Monde, “Beninese Ship Children Were Slaves,” Afro1 News (May 1, 2001).

150. Teiga, M., “Cotonou, capitale africaine du trafic d'enfants,” Courrier International 641 (February 13, 2003)Google Scholar, drawn from a Cotonou paper, La Montagne.

151. For further discussion of the claim about “200,000” children see “Introduction” to Lawrance and Roberts, eds., Trafficking Women and Children, forthcoming.

152. For example, Global March Against Child Labor, “Report on the Worst Forms of Child Labor: Ghana” (2004). The most frequently cited source was US Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

153. International Organization for Migration, “New IOM Figures on the Global Scale of Trafficking,” Trafficking in Migrants 23 (April 2001)Google Scholar.

154. Personal Email Communication with Wendy Davies, Plan International, March 25, 2009. See also, A. M. J. Van Gaalen, “Review of Initiatives to Combat Child Trafficking by Members of the Save the Children Alliance” (Montreal, 2003).

155. ASI “Projet Sous-Régional de Lutte contre le Travail et le Trafic des Enfants Domestiques” (April 2003), inaugurated in Lomé, Togo, 2001, included the following domestic NGO partners in Benin, Ghana, Gabon, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Togo.

156. See I. Nagel, “Kinderhandel in Westafrika: Bericht einer Recherche zum Thema” (Osnabruck, 2000).

157. Les Associations d'Enfants et Jeunes Travailleurs is coordinated by Enda TM Jeunesse Action and financed by grants from Caritas, Enda Tiers Monde, Save the Children Suède, SKN Hollande, Terre des Hommes Genève et l'Union Européenne.

158. Catholic Action for Street Children and UNICEF, “The Exodus: The Growing Migration of Children from Ghana's Rural Areas to the Urban Centres” (1999); ILO/IPEC, “Combating Trafficking in Children for Labour Exploitation in West and Central Africa. Synthesis Report. Based on Studies of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Togo,” (Geneva: ILO, 2001), 33–4, 67–8; UNICEF, “La Traite d'Enfants en Afrique,” 6.

159. Thirty countries were formally surveyed 1994–2000 by the ILO, including ten African countries: L. Veil, “Problématique du travail et du trafic des enfants domestiques en Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre” (UNICEF 1998); W. Tengy, “Ghana Country Study: Combating the Trafficking in Children for Labour Exploitation in West and Central Africa” (ILO/IPEC, 2000).

160. ILO/IPEC, “Combating Trafficking.”

161. ASI, “Projet Sous-Régional,” 5–6: “Le projet a couvert six pays (Bénin, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Niger et Togo) qui ont été identifiés lors des recherches nationales et sous-régionales comme constituant des lieux d'envoi, de passage et de destination des enfants victimes de trafic.”

162. ASI, “Projet Sous-Régional de Lutte contre le Travail et le Trafic des Enfants Domestiques” (2003); ASI, “The Cocoa Industry in West Africa: A history of exploitation” (2004); Riisøen, K. H., Hatløy, A., and Bjerkan, L., “Travel to Uncertainty: A Study of Child Relocation in Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Mali,” FAFO Research (Oslo, 2004)Google Scholar.

163. Atuguba et al., “Review,” 7.

164. Brown, C. L., Moral Capital (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006)Google Scholar.

165. UNESCO, “Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking,” (May 20, 2002).

166. See Torg, C. S., “Human Trafficking Enforcement in the United States,” Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law 14 (2006), 503Google Scholar.

167. Fitzgibbon, “Modern-Day Slavery?” 88.

168. HRW, “Togo,” 46–7.

169. ILO/IPEC, “Combating Trafficking,” 36, 45.

170. Plan-Togo, “For the Price of a Bike,” 37.

171. UNICEF Innocenti Insight, “Trafficking in Human Beings,” 20.

172. ASI, “Projet Sous-Régional,” 20.

173. HRW, “Togo,” 46.

174. ASI, “Projet Sous-Régional,” 21–3.

175. TdH, “Les petites mains des carrières,” 34–40.

176. IRIN, “Anti-trafficking law alters routes, not flow,” January 12, 2009. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82319 (last accessed May 19, 2010).

177. MWCA, “FACTSHEET: The Human Trafficking Act (Act 694), 2005,” Compiled by Sylvester Kyei-Gyamfi, Department of Children (Accra, 2007). http://www.mowacghana.net/?q=node/21 (last accessed May 19, 2010).

178. Republic of Ghana, Human Trafficking Act of 2005 (Act 694), Article 1, Subsection 1 (a) and (b). See Human Trafficking Act, 2005 (Act 694), Government Printer, Assembly Press, Accra 2005 (GPC/A444/300/8/2005).

179. GPC/A444/300/8/2005, Human Trafficking Act of 2005 (Act 694), Art.1, Sub.2–4.

180. Whereas Nigeria's Child Rights Act (2003) also criminalizes child trafficking, in only twenty of the country's thirty-six states has the law been enacted. TIPR 2009: 226, 254.

181. TIPR 2009: 226–7.

182. R. P Andrew and B. N. Lawrance, “Anti-Trafficking Legislation in Sub-Saharan Africa between Paradigm and Remedy: A Preliminary Analysis,” in Lawrance and Roberts, eds., Trafficking Women and Children, forthcoming.

183. Human Trafficking (Amendment) Bill, Government Printer, Assembly Press, Accra 2007 (GPC/A464/350/9/2007); T. E. Amuzu, “What Does Human Trafficking Mean In Ghana?” Legal Resources Centre-Ghana/ILO Concept Paper no. 1 on the Human Trafficking Act (2006).

184. Danish Immigration Service, “Protection of Victims of Trafficking in Ghana” (Copenhagen, 2008), 8: “The Attorney-General's Department explained that during the passage of Act 694 the words ‘for the purpose of exploitation’ were mistakenly left out. The effect of this omission was that the definition of human trafficking was not in accord with the internationally agreed definition of human trafficking in the Palermo Protocol.”

185. Merry, Human Rights, 1.

186. http://allafrica.com/stories/201002011564.html (last accessed May 19, 2010).

187. For controversy surrounding Ghana's domestic violence legislation, see Hodžić, S., “The Logics of Controversy: Gender Violence, Women's Rights, and the Frictions of Ghanaian Advocacy,” in Burrill, E. S., Roberts, R. L. and Thornberry, E., eds., Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Athens, 2010)Google Scholar forthcoming; Stafford, N. K., “Permission for Domestic Violence: Marital Rape in Ghanaian Marriages,” Women's Rights Law Reporter 29 (2008): 6375Google Scholar; Ampofo, A. A., “Collective Activism: The Domestic Violence Bill becoming Law in Ghana,” African and Asian Studies 7:4 (2008): 395421CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

188. TIPR, 2009, 51.

189. For the child rights act, see Laird, S., “The 1998 Children's Act: Problems of Enforcement in Ghana,” British Journal of Social Work 32 (2002): 893905CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

190. For a critique of the “moral panic” and sex trafficking, see Kempadoo, K., “Introduction: From Moral Panic to Global Justice: Changing Perspectives on Trafficking,” Kempadoo, K. et al., eds., Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered (Boulder, CO, 2005)Google Scholar.

191. Danish Immigration Service, “Protection of Victims of Trafficking in Ghana,” 8: “Edward Amuzu, LRC, explained that … pressure from foreign governments, mainly the United States, helped in promulgating the Act.” For USAID action on trafficking, see USAID, “Trafficking in Persons: The USAID Strategy for Response,” (February 2003) PD-ABX-358.

192. Ritualo et al., “Measuring Child Labor.”