14-year-old pregnant girl,15 others rescued from traffickers

A 14-year-old pregnant girl and 15 other minors have been rescued from being trafficked from Ghana to Ivory Coast.

The minors from the Central Region were being sent into forced labour and forced marriages, according to the rescuers.

They included six girls and 18 boys, with one of the girls being pregnant at 14.

James Kofi Annan, Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of Challenging Heights, the group that rescued them,  indicated that this brings the total number of children the organisation has rescued this year to 57.

He said the organisation had rescued 24 more children in September 2022 alone.

Eight of the children, he said, were rescued through conventional means, while 16 others were rescued on Ghana’s borders with its neighbouring countries.

Explaining the seriousness of modern slavery, the CEO said the issue has become widespread and is affecting nations globally.

“Modern slavery occurs in almost every country in the world and cuts across ethnic, cultural and religious lines, and Ghana is not an exception,” he told Joy News in an interview.

He said new data from the International Labour Organization (ILO), Walk Free Foundation (WFF), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) shows that 49.6million people were living in modern slavery in 2021, almost 10 million more than the previous global data on the issue.

Of the figure, 28 million of them were in forced labour, while 22 million were trapped in forced marriages, with over 26.7 million of them being females.

Mr Annan added that Challenging Heights recently released a comprehensive report on child labour, which revealed that over 60% of all children found in villages along  Lake Volta were involved in child labour.

The report further revealed that there is evidence to show that there are over 20,000 children in forced labour on Lake Volta alone.

Based on this, Challenging Heights, he said, is calling on the government to support agencies that are fighting this canker, especially the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Ghana Police Service, as it readies itself to draft the 2023 fiscal policy.

He also commended the Ghana Police Service, the Department of Social Welfare and the Ghana Navy for their efforts in helping to rescue victims across the nation.