Human trafficking has become a major menace in Ghana and other parts of the African continent. The miseries and stultifying effects of the cruelties of the slave trade which Africa suffered for four centuries before its abolition are better forgotten than remembered, but the world is currently plagued by modern day forms of the trade, dehumanizing the conditions of persons who fall victim to it.

In order to develop a programme of action directed at reducing and possibly eradicating the trafficking and smuggling of persons across national, regional and continental boundaries, the Migrants Commission of the Ghana Catholic Bishop's Conference organized a workshop in Accra last July, on the dangers of the menace for member organisations of Caritas Internationalis.

The workshop brought together about 35 participants from Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, La Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Cameroon, Senegal, Sierra- Leone and Liberia. They shared their nations' experiences on human trafficking and discussed strategies to mitigate or eliminate the incidence.

Among other objectives of the workshop was identifying inputs for a framework to guiding, rescuing and rehabilitation strategies, the various ways of resource mobilisation for media campaigns and providing inputs for the establishment of Rescue, Rehabilitation and Reintegration Committees at the regional, national, diocesan and parish levels. Also to establish a zonal network to enforce the implementation of the UN Action on Human trafficking.

Human Trafficking is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, trading or receipt of persons within and across borders by the use of force, threats and other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power, or exploitation of vulnerability. It is also against the law to give or receive payments and benefits to achieve consent. Exploitation of people include at the minimum, induced prostitution.

Generally, it is women and children who are victims of human trafficking and this cuts across national borders into the international arena. According to a survey in the USA, between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. Many more are trafficked within their own country. About 1.2 million children are also victims.

The two major routes in West Africa along which children are trafficked are the Mali-Burkina Faso-Ivory Coast route, and the Togo-Benin-Nigeria-Cameroon route, with Ghana being a strategic transit point between the two routes.

The Most Rev. Paul Bemile, Bishop of Wa and Episcopal Chairman of the Migrants Commission of the Ghana Bishop's Conference, told the workshop in Accra that child trafficking was not motivated only by the need for labour on plantation farms and their use as child soldiers, but it also formed part of the global sex trade, which is considered as the worst form of child labour. He suggested that the Human Trafficking Bill should be vigorously enforced at both national and international levels to prosecute prospective traffickers and perpetrators of the inhuman trade.

Despite the many efforts by organisations and religious bodies in finding solutions, the reality is that it is a well networked business, operated by people who can be most vicious towards both the victims and the anti-traffickers if they are not careful in their efforts.

On the domestic scene, both adults and children are lured from the rural areas to urban environs with promises of greener pastures and better opportunities of education, only to have the victims visited with difficult, and dehumanizing working and living conditions.

A story is told in one of the dailies in Ghana about the harrowing experience of a bread baker, who stopped her bread-baking business in Ghana with the hope of making more money as a nanny in Russia, only to be lured into prostitution. There are genuine demands for house-helps, laundry persons and other forms of domestic work but one cannot always be sure such demands would escape abuse.

There have been reports from the Middle East and Europe of African women who were lured there on promises of jobs or even marriages only to find themselves forced into prostitution. Men have also ended up working virtually for free for traffickers to who they find themselves indebted in amounts they cannot easily work to pay off and be free again

The Director of Ghana Immigration Service, Ms. Elizabeth Adjei, speaking at an Anti-Human Trafficking Training and Capacity Building workshop for law enforcement professionals in Accra, said only one prosecution had been done successfully so far, although the Immigration Service and the police had made a number of arrests.

She said in 2007 alone, the Service intercepted 26 persons who were being trafficked. According to her, the Human Trafficking Act, Act 694, can only be implemented to the letter, if arrests made by the Police, Immigration and the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) are successfully prosecuted."

The International Labour Organisation estimates in its global report that $32 billion was generated annually through the exploitation of men, women and children. People are recruited in a variety of ways through the promise of good jobs only to find that they are in debt to traffickers and thus obliged to work for little or no remuneration.

In an effort to curb the situation, the Deputy Director of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), Assistant Commission of Police Ken Yeboah, has stressed on the need for effective networking and joint investigative mechanism among the security agencies.

If care is not taken to totally eliminate this canker, sooner or later, countries will among other negative things, have large populations of cultureless and religiousless people who do not accept or even understand what love is all about and thus will live without morals.

Interventions by the government to find jobs for the youth and also encourage children to stay in schools will go a long way to curb poverty, so that parents would be able to keep their children by their side.

Ghana has relevant and adequate legal frameworks in place to prevent trafficking in persons as well as rescue victims of this modern day business in persons. The Human Trafficking Act, the Domestic Violence Act (Act 732), the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act are all in place and if effectively implemented, the modern day slave trade could be eliminated.

The writer, a Catholic, is a journalist in Accra

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