BBC article via Worldwire
Hundreds of children sold by their parents to fishermen in Ghana have been reunited with their families. The children - some absent for up to 10 years - were freed as part of a scheme by the humanitarian International Organisation of Migration (IOM), which is helping the fishermen with equipment and business loans. Families of 173 children welcomed their offspring in a special ceremony organised by the IOM in the fishing town of Yeji, on the bank of the Volta River.
| "Hiya, son! Welcome home! Sorry I sold you..." |
The BBC’s correspondent in the area, Kwabenah Sapong Arkosah, said the children were relieved to see their parents and already talking of going to school following months of counselling by the IOM. He said all of the liberated youngsters, including girls as young as four looked very malnourished, some of them brutalised. The chief of Yeji, Nana Yaw Kagbrese told Reuters that the children were very happy to be returning home. "But it was also sad to see children so young who had had to work like adults," he said.
| Have the reasons they were sold gone away? |
The organisation says there are still an estimated 3,000 children working for fishermen. The children are sold to the fishermen by their parents who cannot afford to feed or school them. The fishermen value the children because their small hands are ideal for handling fishing nets. The children - some taken away when they were as young as three - had been forced to work from dawn to dusk fishing on Lake Volta in central Ghana. When the nets got caught on the bottom of the lake they had to dive down to free them. More than 1,200 have so far been traced by the IOM.
"I can't dive that deep, boss!"
"Here, lemme tie a rock around your neck..." |
The IOM’s project co-ordinator Ernest Taylor told the BBC that the children were severely traumatised after being denied basic rights. "Sometimes they work from dawn till deep in the night and are poorly fed - most of them eat garri, staple food in the country, without fish or meat, even though they are engaged in fishing they are hardly given fish," he said. n the fishermen’s village, the children have been sleeping in very crowded rooms and could not even wash their clothes, said Mr Taylor. The fishermen, who claim they were not aware they were doing wrong, said they were helping the "parents to earn some kind of a living", when they paid the destitute families up to 1.5m cedis ($180) per boy.
| "It's wrong to buy little kiddies and work them until they drop? When did that start?" |
The IOM persuaded the fishermen to release the children, pointing out that they were infringing children’s rights and that it was wrong to promise parents that the children would be sent to school when in fact they were only engaged in fishing. As a goodwill gesture the IOM offered the fishermen counselling, training and equipment to continue with their business, without using child labour. And the parents are being helped to set up small businesses so they can earn enough to take care of their children.
"Well, here I am in the middle of Ghana. I think I'll start a small business. Whadda we got to sell around here?"
"Silt."
"Fine. I'll open a silt stand." |
The operation to reunite the children with their parents began in October, 2002, under the auspices of the Ghanaian Government, the International Labour Organisation, Catholic Relief Services and local charity Apple.
Decided not to play this as anti-UN, go for the reparations angle, or point out that Kofi Annan has problems at home. I am glad that the UN and charities appear to have handled this situation effectively. |