Challenging Heights rescues 24 trafficked children
Challenging Heights, an anti-slavery organisation through its conventional approaches, has rescued 24 children from human trafficking this month alone.
The children rescued were made up of six girls and 18 boys, with one of the girls being pregnant at the age of 14, bringing the total number of children the organisation has rescued so far this year, 2022, to 57 children.
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The rescue exercise was carried out at two separate locations, where the first eight were rescued around Dambai, Kpando, Gemenie and Aflao and the remaining 16 at a border town.
A statement signed by the President of the organisation, James Kofi Annan, said the organisation had rescued nearly 1,800 children from various forms of slavery and forced labour.
It said the organisation had released a comprehensive report on child labour, which revealed that over 60 per cent of all children found along the Lake Volta villages were involved in child labour.
The report, he said, did not isolate those found in forced labour, although there was evidence to show that there were over 20,000 children found in forced labour on Lake Volta alone.
More investment
The statement, therefore, called on the government to increase investments to support state agencies that were at the forefront of fighting human trafficking and modern slavery in the country.
It stated that as the government prepared itself to draft the 2023 fiscal policy, it should consider increasing financial aid and support to such agencies, particularly the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Ghana Police Service, which was in dire need of vehicles for their operations.
The statement said that new data from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Walk Free Foundation (WFF) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), showed that 49.6 million people were living in modern slavery in 2021, which was 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. Modern slavery occurs in almost every country in the world and cuts across ethnic, cultural and religious lines and Ghana is not an exception,” the statement said.