• Source and destination communities educated – Eight Ghanaian organisations educated 127,161 residents in the region about human and children’s rights and Ghana’s anti-human trafficking laws.
• Children rescued from forced labour and enslavement – 617 children were freed from enslavement and forced labour and enrolled in school or vocational training facilities. 388 fishermen (masters) agreed to release children. Two transit shelters were established that enabled the rescuing organisations to provide a safe haven for the victims in preparation for reintegration into their communities.
• School children educated each other on risks of trafficking – 328 peer educators were trained to sensitise their peers on child trafficking and labour.
• Promulgation of the Community Rules and Regulation Act into a nationally recognised law – These laws build on efforts made by others in the sector who have persistently sought recognition of the need to prosecute traffickers, parents, and employers profiting from the exploitation of children in Ghana.

Child labour is a serious problem in Ghana, where about one-third of children between the ages of seven and 14 work full-time. In the Lake Volta region, children as young as four are sent to live with relatives in hope of learning a trade. This cultural tradition has become twisted by many Ghanaian fishermen who pay parents US$ 50 per child, ostensibly to teach these children their trade. Few parents realise that their children spend their days jumping into frigid, parasite-infested waters at dawn seven days a week to catch fish and untangle nets for 10 to 12 hour stretches. Young girls are tasked with cleaning, smoking and selling the fish and are also employed as domestic servants. It is common for children to work at cocoa farms and in the commercial sex industry. Many of these children die or suffer from ill health, malnutrition and deplorable living conditions with no access to basic medical care. Traffickers, including relatives and parents, often understand the illegality of child labour, but traditional cultural practices, combined with poverty, a lack of viable economic activities and human selfishness drive the growth, supply and demand of child labour and human trafficking in Ghana.

In 2007, the Ghana Child Labour Strategic Initiative was established to focus on child labour and trafficking in the fishing communities of Lake Volta. The Initiative’s approach addressed the child labour problem around Lake Volta from several perspectives. Because the most effective way to counter human trafficking, including child labour, is to stop it before it starts, this three-year Initiative focussed on prevention efforts among parents, children, traffickers and law enforcement officials to keep children from being trapped in the fishing industry. The approach also addressed the underlying poverty that fuels child labour practices by training parents in alternative income generation activities to boost their household income and reduce their dependence on child labour. Additionally, the fishermen and other traffickers were sensitised to the impact of child labour and the applicable laws and sentences they would face if prosecuted. They also received training on alternative income generating activities, and some received microcredit loans to improve their fishing enterprises without the use of child labour. Finally, the Initiative’s strategy included a rescue and rehabilitation component, addressed in part by the establishment of transit shelters to make it easier for the rescued children to receive medical care and counselling before reunification with their families. With a total investment of US$ 1,362,689, the initiative's goal was to impact over 40,000 people.

The efforts of this Initiative’s eight Ghanaian implementing organisations resulted in a number of important achievements including community education, rescue of children from forced labour and their rehabilitation, the promulgation of by-laws, training of police officers, the creation of community surveillance units to protect more children from exploitative labour and trafficking, and the establishment of two transit shelters for rescued children. The Initiative’s education and awareness campaigns, in particular, have impacted communities in a positive way, leading to parents withdrawing their children from labour in both the fishing and cocoa industries. Additionally, prevention education related to keeping vulnerable children in school or enrolling them in vocational training schools deterred some parents from sending their children to relatives as labourers.

Despite these overall successes, some expectations were not adequately met in the implementation of the Initiative. For example, we expected the eight implementing organisations to actively involve national governmental agencies, especially the Child Labour Unit (CLU). However, the independent evaluation indicated that national governmental bodies were not aware of the Initiative during its three years of work. While authorities at the district level were successfully involved, the lack of an intentional strategy to engage with and include Ghana’s governmental representatives at the national level represented a missed opportunity.

Financial sustainability also remains a concern for most of the organisations in this initiative. For those involved in the rescue and reintegration of children, alternative sources of funding are limited. Creative responses to economically empower and motivate fishermen (masters), parents and guardians of trafficked children were explored, and FYSSO’s village savings and loan programme proved to be the only effective and promising solution in this regard.