MORE CHILDREN IN RISKY ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES...In Northern Region (PAGE 20)

THERE are more children involved in various hazardous economic activities in the Northern Region than any other region in the country.
A child labour survey conducted by the Ghana Statistical Survey Service and published in 2003, indicates that there are almost 332,664 children in the region who were engaged in some form of economic activity.
Child trafficking is also a major challenge in the region. The area is considered as a transit point for both domestic and cross- boarder trafficking with females being the most vulnerable.
A number of reasons, according to the Statistical Service, accounts for this rising phenomenon. They include economic factors as a result of unemployment, under-employment and inadequate income from poor harvests and natural disasters.
The undeveloped labour markets, coupled with weak enforcement of child labour laws and the vulnerability of children also account for the worsening situation.
The prevailing harsh economic conditions also compel children to accept any form of job to support themselves and sometimes their families.
Other motives identified by the report include socio-cultural factors such as the breakdown of the extended and nuclear family system, single parenthood and peer pressure. Child fosterage system in the area is also being abused resulting in discrimination, destitution and teenage pregnancy culminating in inter-generational child labour.
These issues were raised at a roundtable discussion to disseminate good practices in combating child trafficking and reaching of consensus among stakeholders on the development of a road map and replication scaling up in Tamale.
The two-day programme was organised by the International Labour Organisation and the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour ILO/IPEC in collaboration with other stakeholders.
The participants discussed lessons learnt under LUTRENA 1, an ILO/IPEC initiative aimed at tackling child trafficking in West Africa.
The practices include increased enrolment in school and the provision of recreational resources, economic empowerment of families and tackling high school dropout rate. The rest are establishment of anti-child trafficking clubs and support and partnership with community surveillance teams and the passage and enforcement of human trafficking laws.
In a speech read on behalf of the Northern Regional Minister, Mr Stephen S. Nayina, he described the prevailing situation as most unfortunate and that all forms of child labour was a development challenge for government.
He stated that as part of measures to contain the multi-sectoral problem, the issues had accordingly been included in the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy II document.
“We also have in place laws such as the Children’s and the Human Trafficking Acts to protect children and institutions that implement policies related to the welfare of children,” the minister said.
Mr Nayina further observed that there was direct correlation between child trafficking and basic education, and expressed hope that the capitation grant and school feeding programme would help stem the tide.
The Programme Co-ordinator of ILO/IPEC, Dr Margaret Sackey, said 200,000 children were estimated to have been trafficked in Africa in 2000.
According to her, the ILO through its IPEC project to combat trafficking of children for labour exploitation, was working with key stakeholders in Benin, Burkina Faso and Ghana to reduce the demand for trafficked children and provide direct assistance to victims and their families.
She further stated that since the establishment of the Denmark/ILO Programme Co-operation Agreement in 2004, the project had withdrawn 3,840 girls and boys from exploitation and also prevented another 7,256 children from being trafficked thus surpassing its targets of 600 children withdrawn and 2,500 children prevented.
Dr Sackey explained that it was in view of the complex and dynamic nature of the trafficking, particularly children, that IPEC found it expedient to document the good practices of its projects to serve as reference for knowledge building, replication and up-scaling of interventions.
She said her organisation was also working in collaboration with other stakeholders such as the Regional Advisory Integrated Network Systems (RAINS), a Tamale-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), to eliminate child trafficking from some selected districts in the Northern and Upper East regions.