In his undergraduate dissertation on the causes and effects of child labour in Ghana, Ayitey -Quaye (1996( , in Bruscino 2001 reminds us that even the rich who are supposed to know better have come to accept child labour, with some sending small boys for errands on the University of Cape Coast campus. The root causes of child labour include illiteracy, poverty and lack of information. By continuing you agree to the use of cookies. Poverty is, therefore, cyclical in these circumstances – much more than cheap labor is being exchanged. This is all the more difficult because Parliament is often called upon to ratify agreements without the opportunity to amend them. RTS. Consistent with the quote above, the US Department of Labour puts the number of children engaged in hazardous work on cocoa farms in both Ghana and the Ivory Coast at 2 million.Footnote 20 Working in hazardous conditions on cocoa farms definitely has negative effects on children’s health, education and future livelihoods.Footnote 21 The Fairtrade Foundation attributes the causes of child labour to poverty, unjust terms of world trade, conflict and drought.Footnote 22. 19 The Guardian, ‘Aboard the Slave Ship of Despair: Traffickers Buying the Young in West Africa’ (2001), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/apr/16/chrismcgreal (accessed 6 November 2020). Apart from the reported cases of child labour on cocoa farms, child trafficking by cocoa farmers and their agents is also quite common in Ghana.Footnote 25 Traffickers target poor children, some of whom are recruited with the ‘consent’ of their parents from one part of the country to another, particularly from the north to the south for work.Footnote 26 It is reported that traffickers are mostly middle-aged individuals.Footnote 27 Ghana is a source, transit and destination country for children and women trafficked for forced labour and sexual exploitation. It follows that a litigation strategy that targets comprehensive judicial review and standard setting regarding child labour could lead to significant reform in that domain. What is Child Labour? Fighting child labour. These children aged 7–13, for example, were called almudos in Gambia, or talibés in Senegal.The parents placed their children with marabout or serin, a cleric or quranic teacher. Child labour has a multiplicity of causes including socialisation and poverty. Since independence, the cocoa industry has contributed significantly to Ghana’s foreign exchange earnings, household income, and employment generation. This paper finds that the socio-cultural contexts of child labour play a critical role in children's involvement in farming in the rural area while poverty also contributes to children's engagement in artisanal fishing work in the slum urban communities in Ghana. As the Executive Branch has not in many decades proposed legislation to comprehensively address child labour issues, we should look to the Ghanaian Parliament to do so. Child Labour in Ghana, Child Labour and Labour Laws in Ghana, Can I Employ a Child?, Child Labour and Exploitation and more on Mywage Ghana. The experience of the cocoa industry in Ghana offers lessons for the legislature, executive, judiciary and other critical stakeholders about the need to promote international labour standards and ensure that child labour is eradicated from Ghana’s cocoa industry. This is twice as common in rural areas. Child labour Report; Data in 2010 Population and Housing census report (Go to page 81-94 of its document.) Again, exclusive legislation would mean that Parliament would have to designate a Ministry to be charged with child labour issues, with an accompanying budget. Girls do more household chores while boys work in the labor force. Conflicts of interest: The authors declare none. The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Social Sustainability in Agriculture: An Anthropological Perspective on Child Labour in Cocoa Production in Ghana, Use of Children and the Issue of Child Labour in Ghanaian Cocoa Farm Activities, Journal of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, Cocoa Cultivation in Ghana: an analysis of farmers’ information and knowledge systems and attitudes, PhD Thesis, Institute of International Development and Applied Economics, https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/forced-labor, https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/our-work/child-forced-labor-trafficking/child-labor-cocoa, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C182, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/apr/16/chrismcgreal, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/publ/field/africa/central.pdf, https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/5bd05ac616.pdf. Additionally, article 23 of the Constitution, nested in Chapter 5 of the Constitution, imposes a mandatory duty on administrative bodies and officials to act fairly and reasonably and to comply with requirements imposed on them by law. This works out to be almost one in every ten children in the world. 30 Ibid, art 2. Many Ghanaian children participate in child labor due to desperation and ignorance. as child fishing, child farming, child trafficking and child mining (Sam, 2016), some studies also focus on the impact of child labour on the health and education of children (Hamenoo et al., 2018). This paper recommends that child labour must be tackled in a coordinated manner on a cross-sectoral basis and there is the need to adopt policies that would address the category of work that falls within worst forms of child labour (WFCL). ‡ Child labor understood as the worst forms of child labor per se under Article 3(a)–(c) of ILO C. 182.. Of all children in Ghana aged 5 to17 years, about 21 per cent are involved in child labour and 14 per cent are engaged in hazardous forms of labour. "shouldUseHypothesis": true, 28 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of a Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime on the Work of its First to Eleventh Sessions, U.N. GAOR 55th Session, Agenda Item 105, U.N. Doc. 6 ILO-IPEC (2017), Global Estimates of Child Labour: Results and Trends, 2012–2016, Geneva, p 11. The data do not convincingly show, as most literature claims, that poverty is the main cause of child labor. 20 US Department of Labour, ‘Child Labour in the Production of Cocoa’, Bureau of International Labour Affairs (2017), https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/our-work/child-forced-labor-trafficking/child-labor-cocoa (accessed 14 August 2019). B ackground on the C hild L abour S ituation in G hana. 2 US Department of Labour, ‘Child Labour in the Production of Cocoa’, Bureau of International Labour Affairs (2017), https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/our-work/child-forced-labor-trafficking/child-labor-cocoa (accessed 14 August 2019). View all Google Scholar citations An abstract is not available for this content. This, it is suggested, can be done at different levels: (i) enacting new legislation; (ii) amending existing legislation; or (iii) ratifying, through the mechanism of an Act of Parliament, all the major international treaties, conventions and agreements that address child labour issues. Most children involved in WFCL suffer from depression and often lack hope that their situation will improve.Footnote 12 Data from the World Bank, UNICEF and the United States Department of Labour confirm these findings.Footnote 13 Even though data and statistics on child labour are widely publicised, and the prevalence of WFCL in Ghana is evident, the phenomenon persists and may be on the rise. Email: ratuguba@law.harvard.edu. Globally, there are approximately 152 million children involved in child labour. For instance, the 1992 Ghanaian Constitution in Article 28 guarantees the child’s protection from engaging in any work that is considered injurious to his or her health, education and development. Globally, there are approximately 152 million children... III. It is noteworthy that the Supreme Court of Ghana has approved the application of this constitutional provision through simple processes by ordinary Ghanaians in the 2004 decision in the case of Awuni v West African Examinations Council (WAEC).Footnote 33. Ghana and the LGBT community The other cause of child trafficking in Ghana is explained by the cultural practices. In December 2005, the government of Ghana enacted the Human Trafficking Act (Act 694) as its most comprehensive legislation against trafficking in persons. Those who have lived to tell of such things say they were left with a tiny amount of food and only filthy drinking water for a journey that lasts days […] The dilapidated Nigerian ship has been plying the west coast for years, transporting its cargoes of children to labour in the sprawling cocoa plantations, or to work as servants, and de facto sex slaves, in the homes of the rich. 1. Render date: 2021-05-15T14:10:27.752Z Incidence of child labour in cocoa production in Ghana In the past decade, various concerns have been raised about child labour use in the agricultural sector of Ghana where cocoa in particular plays a major role. Laws and regulations which prohibit child labour abound in Ghana’s legal system. A report on child labour situation in Ghana issued by In this case, the Supreme Court accorded a corporate body the same status as a natural person in enforcing the fundamental rights enshrined in the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. According to wikipedia, Child Labour is the practice of having children engage in economic activity, on a part- or full-time basis. Some have interpreted this provision in such a way as to make it next to impossible for PMBs to be proposed. The 60 participants included government officials, representatives from NGOs, and both parents whose children were involved in child labour and parents whose children were not involved. There are also judicial options that may be used to combat the WFCL, although this route is less clear cut and neat. Such a strategy would be twofold: establishing precedent that could be used to prevent the many human rights abuses implicated in WFCL, and effectively cripple the practice; and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, targeting state institutions that should be guarding against WFCL as defendants, using Article 23 of the Constitution, and getting the courts to literally order them, on pain of sanctions, to do their job. The incentives for its existence are many. Others believe that the Constitution did not intend to outlaw all PMBs; but only those that have direct and significant financial implications. Child labour is … See also Kelly Hyland, The Impact of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, 8 HUM. The research is grounded on Concurrent Parallel mixed methods research design. Boys dominate sectors like fishing, commercial agriculture, forestry, quarrying and mining, truck pushing, and drug peddling; while girls are engaged predominantly in child domestic work, porterage (‘kayaye’), prostitution, selling and local eatery (chop bar) work.Footnote 10. 182)’, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C182 (accessed 6 November 2020). Thus, Parliament has additional duties in examining international agreements and possibly ratifying them for domestic implementation. Ghana has a responsibility to fight child labour issues especially on cocoa farms. ’ action button Stephen R. Kirkhorn doing hazardous work has gone up in the last two decades courts. This message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings ( hereinafter ‘! Implementing programmes designed to combat the problem content is also available in Ghana, internal. You with a continuously improving human rights record, Ghana can not such... 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