Another 17 children have been rescued from hazardous forced labour on Lake Volta by Challenging Heights. The Ghanaian NGO returned to the Lake following the successful rescue of 21 trafficked children in October.
Their experiences add to the mounting and irrefutable evidence that slavery continues to be practiced in Ghana in the 21st Century. We know that:
· children are exchanged for money or given as bonded labour to pay off a debt;
· Children are transported to places they have no hope of returning home from by themselves;
· Children are handed over by parents who genuinely expect them to return after a few years, whilst traffickers take great pains to make sure they are never seen or heard of again;
· Children are told they are going to a secure life of opportunity, when in fact they are physically and emotionally abused, neglected and starved, and denied an education and even their most basic rights;
· Children are forced to do hazardous labour that is detrimental to their health;
· Children often die from the dangerous work they do and abuse they suffer.
Those familiar with our country’s history will recognize these stories. You can hear similar ones every day from the guides who show visitors around slave castles in Cape Coast and Elmina.
They are the experiences of our ancestors. But they are also the experiences of thousands of children in our country today.
Historic slavery may have ended, but modern slavery is very much alive in Ghana (as it is in many other countries around the world). People may not be transported across the seas in chains anymore, but the lives of trafficked children who become the property of “masters” are no different.
Cape Coast Castle carries a marble plaque with the words “In Everlasting Memory of the anguish of our ancestors. May those who die rest in peace. May those who return find their roots.
May humanity never again perpetrate such injustices against humanity. We, the living, vow to uphold this”. Yet a Government of Ghana ILO/IPEC report in 2013 estimated that there are 49,000 children working on Lake Volta alone, 21,000 in hazardous labour.
This is not counting those trapped in domestic servitude or sexual exploitation and those in forced labour in mining or agriculture, which the Global Slavery Index estimates exceeds 190,000. So it appears that we have forgotten, and that we, the living, are failing to uphold a noble promise made in the shadow of our dark history.
<<Print>>