Hostname: page-component-68945f75b7-k8jzq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-04T12:24:32.626Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Child Labor “Problem” to Human Trafficking “Crisis”: Child Advocacy and Anti-Trafficking Legislation in Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2010

Benjamin N. Lawrance
Benjamin N. Lawrance
Affiliation:
Rochester Institute of Technology
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between multidimensional child advocacy campaigns and the enactment of Ghana's Human Trafficking Act (2005). I argue that while child advocacy has a rich history, the diffuse labor-oriented advocacy characteristic of the 1990s failed to articulate an achievable goal. Child labor advocacy was impotent because the diverse agencies involved adopted different positions about the permissibility of child labor. By contrast, the anti-trafficking initiatives of the early 2000s focused narrowly on legislative remedy and formulated a discourse of “crisis.” An anti-trafficking coalition built on an international regulation model that emerged from the cocoa industry. As agents of social and political change, domestic, regional, and foreign nongovernmental organizations and intergovernmental organizations played important roles in shaping debates and framing new law. The Ghanaian law, however, is of limited effectiveness because it ignores autochthonous social practices with historically rich traditions, and it enjoins a narrow, economic model for the proliferation of trafficking.

Type
Shifting Boundaries between Free and Unfree Labor
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 78 , Issue 1 , Fall 2010 , pp. 63 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

The author is the Berber B. Constable Jr. Endowed Professor of International Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He wishes to thank Carolyn Brown, Richard Roberts, Ruby Andrew, Estelle Appiah, Omnia El Shakry, Marcel van der Linden, Allison Miller, the Yale University Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, and the many Ghanaians who assisted in the research for this article.

1. U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, “Trafficking in Persons' Report June 2009” (henceforth TIPR), 142.

2. TIPR, 11 describes these criteria.

3. See Ritualo, A. R., Castro, C. L., and Gormly, S., “Measuring Child Labor: Implications for Policy and Program Design,” Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 24 (2003): 402Google Scholar; Stone, D., Policy Paradox (New York, 2001)Google Scholar.

4. See Merry, S. E., Human Rights and Gender Violence (Chicago, 2006)Google Scholar; Smith, J. and Pagnucco, R. with Lopez, G. A., “Globalizing Human Rights: The Work of Transnational Human Rights NGOs in the 1990s,” Human Rights Quarterly 20:2 (1998): 379–412Google Scholar; Welch, C. E., ed., NGOs and Human Rights (Philadelphia, PA, 2000)Google Scholar; Welch, C. E., Protecting Human Rights in Africa (Philadelphia, PA, 2001)Google Scholar.

5. See B. White, “Shifting Positions on Child Labor: The Views and Practice of Intergovernmental Organizations,” and L. S. Wiseberg, “Nongovernmental Organizations in the Struggle Against Child Labor,” in Weston, B. H., ed., Child Labor and Human Rights: Making Children Matter (Boulder, CO, 2005), 319–76Google Scholar.

6. Nesi, G., Nogler, L., and Pertile, M., eds., Child Labor in a Globalized World (Farnham, 2008)Google Scholar.

7. Basu, K. and Hoang Van, P., “The Economics of Child Labor,” American Economic Review 88:3 (1998): 413Google Scholar. They further note (414) that “nonpoor people in poor countries do not send their children to work.”

8. Law, R., From Slave Trade to “Legitimate” Commerce (Cambridge, MA, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For neo-abolitionism see, Lawrance, B. N., “Documenting Child Slavery with Personal Testimony: The Origins of Anti-Trafficking NGOs and Contemporary Neo-Abolitionism,” in Lawrance, B. N. and Roberts, R. L., eds., Trafficking in Women and Children in the Aftermath of Slavery: Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Athens, OH, 2011)Google Scholar, forthcoming.

9. Lawrance, B. N., “‘En proie à la fièvre du cacao’: Land and Resource Conflict on an Ewe Frontier, 1922–1939,” African Economic History 20 (2003): 1–47Google Scholar.

10. Cooper, F., Decolonization and African Society (Cambridge, MA, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Adepoju, A., “Review of Research and Data on Human Trafficking in Sub-Saharan Africa,” International Migration 43:1–2 (2005): 76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Tyldum, G. and Brunovskis, A., “Describing the Unobserved: Methodological Challenges in Empirical Studies on Human Trafficking,” International Migration 43:1–2 (2005): 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Heckathorn, D. D., “Respondent-driven Sampling: A New Approach to the Study of Hidden Populations,” Social Problems 44:2 (1997): 198CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Adepoju, “Review of Research,” 75–98.

15. Edmonds, E. V., “Child Labor,” Strauss, J. and Schultz, T. P., eds., Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. 4 (Elsevier, 2008)Google Scholar.

16. See Fitzgibbons, K., “Modern-day Slavery? The Scope of Trafficking in Persons in Africa,” African Security Review 12:1 (2003): 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The earliest West African NGO publication with “traffic” as a focus comes from neighboring Togo: WAO-Afrique, “Le travail des enfants en milieu domestique au Togo,” (Lomé, 1994).

17. Isolated examples of domestic reports predating 1990 include G. Adansi-Pipim, “Survival in Childhood: The Dimensions of the Problem in Ghana,” (Accra, 1986). Scholarly research was similarly scant. Exceptions include Kaye, B., Bringing up Children in Ghana: an Impressionistic Survey (London, 1962)Google Scholar. International research conferences include “Child Labour in Africa: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Child Abuse in Africa, held at Enugu, Nigeria, 27th April—2nd May, 1986,” (Enugu, Nigeria, [1986?]).

18. Adepoju, “Review of Research,” 84.

19. Veil, L., The Issue of Child Domestic Labour and Trafficking in West and Central Africa (Cotonou, 1998)Google Scholar.

20. Adepoju, “Review of Research,” 76–77.

21. The ILO commissioned labor surveys from all African domestic statistics agencies.

22. Ghana Statistical Service, “Ghana Child Labour Survey” (March 2003): 137, xiv-xix.

23. UN Office on Drugs and Crime, “Organized Crime and Irregular Migration from Africa to Europe,” 31 n. 64.

24. Bass, L. E., Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa (Boulder, CO, 2004)Google Scholar.

25. ECOWAS, “ECOWAS Initial Plan of Action against Trafficking in Persons (2002–2003)” (Dakar, 2001).

26. ILO, Child Labour: Targeting the Intolerable: Ages 5–14 (Geneva, 1998)Google Scholar.

27. Including narcotics, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, small arms, and toxic waste. See Akyeampong, E., “Diaspora and Drug Trafficking: A Case of Ghana,” African Affairs 104 (2005): 429–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; UNODC, “Transnational Trafficking and the Rule of Law in West Africa: A Threat Assessment” (Vienna, 2009); also http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1122416.stm (last accessed May 19, 2010).

28. For example, Abenyega, O. and Gockowski, J., Labor Practices in the Cocoa Sector of Ghana (Ibadan, 2003)Google Scholar.

29. Ghanaian National Commission on Children, “1st Draft: A Study into Alleged Involvement of Children in Cocoa Farming in Ghana,” (October 2005), 1–2, 34, 36, 45.1; Abenyega and J. Gockowski, Labor Practices, 28.

30. Abenyega and Gockowski, Labor Practices, 28.

31. Adepoju, “Review of Research,” 89.

32. P. Buhler, “The Volta Region of Ghana: Economic Change in Togoland, 1850–1914,” (Ph.D. diss., UCSD, 1975).

33. Roberts, R. L., “Linkages and Multiplier Effects in the Ecologically Specialized Trade of Precolonial West Africa,” Cahiers d'Études Africaines 20 (1980): 135–148CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lovejoy, P. E., Caravans of Kola (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar; Gayibor, N. L., ed., Histoire des Togolais (Lomé, 1997)Google Scholar, map 23, page 324.

34. Meillassoux, C., ed., Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar.

35. Lawrance, B. N., Locality, Mobility and “Nation” (Rochester, NY, 2007)Google Scholar.

36. Roberts, R. L. and Miers, S., “The End of Slavery in Africa,” in Miers, S. and Roberts, R. L., eds., The End of Slavery in Africa, (Madison, WI, 1988), 20Google Scholar.

37. Dumett, R., “Pressure Groups, Bureaucracy, and the Decision-making Process: The Case of Slave Abolition and Colonial Expansion in the Gold Coast, 1874,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 9 (1981): 193–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Getz, T., Slavery and Reform in West Africa (Athens, OH, 2004)Google Scholar.

38. Maier, D., “Slave Labor and Wage Labor in German Togo, 1885–1914,” in Knoll, A. J. and Gann, L. H., eds., Germans in the Tropics (New York, 1987), 73–92Google Scholar.

39. Hill, P., The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana (Cambridge, MA, 1963), 3Google Scholar.

40. Roberts and Miers, “The End of Slavery in Africa,” 40–41.

41. Austin, G., Land, Labor and Capital in Ghana (Rochester, NY, 2005)Google Scholar.

42. Roberts and Miers, “The End of Slavery in Africa,” 46.

43. Falola, T. and Lovejoy, P. E., “Pawnship in Historical Perspective,” in Lovejoy, P. and Falola, T., eds., Slavery, Pawnship, and Colonialism in Africa (Trenton, NJ, 2002), 1–26Google Scholar; M. Klein and R. L. Roberts, “The Resurgence of Pawning in French West Africa During the Depression of the 1930s,” in Lovejoy and Falola, eds., Slavery, 409–28.

44. ILO, “Stopping Forced Labour: Global Report under the Follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work” (Geneva, 2001), 50.

45. D. Ohadike, “The Decline of Slavery Among the Igbo People,” in Miers and Roberts, End of Slavery, 437–61.

46. Lawrance, B. N., “Trokosi,” in Rodriguez, J. P., ed., Slavery in the Modern World (ABC-CLIO, 2010)Google Scholar, forthcoming; Ameh, R. K., “Trokosi [child slavery] in Ghana: A Policy Approach,” Ghana Studies 1 (1998): 35–62Google Scholar; Goltzman, J. C., “Cultural Relativity or Cultural Intrusion? Female Ritual Slavery in Western Africa and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Ghana as a Case Study,” New England International and Comparative Law Annual 4 (1996): 53–72Google Scholar; Wisdom, M., Trokosi System (Accra, 2001)Google ScholarPubMed.

47. Ohadike, “The Decline of Slavery,” 437–61; Miers, S., Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Klein, M. and Roberts, R. L., “Pawning in the Depression in French West Africa,” African Economic History 16 (1999): 23–37Google Scholar.

48. M. Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge, MA, 1998).

49. Cooper, Decolonization.

50. Austin, Land, Labor and Capital.

51. Roberts and Miers, “The End of Slavery in Africa,” 32–40; Chanock, M., Law, Custom and Social Order (Cambridge, MA, 1985)Google Scholar.

52. Nugent, P., Smugglers, Secessionists and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Borderlands (Athens, OH, 2002)Google Scholar.

53. Berry, S., No Condition is Permanent (Madison, WI, 1993), 8Google Scholar.

54. See Kyle, D. and Dale, J., “Smuggling the State Back In: Agents of Human Smuggling Reconsidered,” in Kyle, D. and Koslowski, R., eds., Global Human Smuggling (Baltimore, MD, 2001), 32Google Scholar.

55. J. Parker, Making the Town (Portsmouth, 2000)Google ScholarPubMed.

56. Manning, P., Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Colonial Dahomey, 1640–1960 (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 167–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57. Lovejoy, P. and Hogendorn, J., Slow Death of Slavery (Cambridge, MA, 1993), 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roberts, R. L. and Klein, M., “The Banamba Slave Exodus of 1905 and the Decline of Slavery in the Western Soudan,” Journal of African History 21 (1980): 375–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58. Robertson, C. and Klein, M., eds., Women and Slavery in Africa (Madison, WI, 1983)Google Scholar.

59. Manning, Slavery, 205–9.

60. Roberts and Miers, “The End of Slavery in Africa”, 19, 36, 43.

61. Coquery-Vidrovitch, C. and d'Almeida-Topor, H., eds., L'Afrique et la crise de 1930 (Paris, 1976)Google Scholar.

62. Austin, G., “Capitalists and Chiefs in the Cocoa Hold-Ups in South Asante, 1927–1938,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 21:1 (1988): 63–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63. Lawrance, B. N., “La Révolte des Femmes: Economic Upheaval and the Gender of Political Authority in Lomé, Togo, 1931–33,” African Studies Review 46 (2003): 43–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64. Austin, G., “The Emergence of Capitalist Relations in South Asante Cocoa-Farming, c. 1916–33,” Journal of African History 28 (1987): 259–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65. Austen, R., African Economic History (Portsmouth, NH, 1987), 203Google Scholar.

66. Agyeman-Duah, I. and Kelly, C., Economic History of Ghana (Accra, 2008)Google Scholar.

67. Acquah, I., Accra Survey (London, 1958)Google Scholar.

68. Busia, K., Report on a Social Survey of Sekondi Takoradi (London, 1950)Google Scholar.

69. Cooper, Decolonization.

70. Austen, , African Economic History, 225–59; J. and E. Goody, “The Circulation of Women and Children in Northern Ghana,” Man New Series 2:2 (1967): 226–48Google Scholar.

71. Mansveltbeck, J. and Sterkenberg, J., The Fishing Industry in Cape Coast, Ghana (Utrecht, 1976)Google Scholar.

72. Garlick, P. C., African Trades and Economic Development in Ghana (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar.

73. Alpine, R. W. L. and Pickett, J., Agriculture, Liberalisation and Economic Growth in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire: 1960–1990 (Paris, 1993)Google Scholar; Tutu, K. A., “The Effects of the Volta Dam on the Sociocultural Changes for the People Living in the Mangrove Economy of the Lower Volta Basin,” in Lauer, H., ed., Ghana: Change Values/Changing Technologies (Legon, 2000), 269–80Google Scholar; Tsikata, D., Living in the Shadow of the Large Dams (Leiden, 2006), 264–78Google Scholar.

74. Canagarajah, S. and Pörtner, C. C., Evolution of Poverty and Welfare in Ghana in the 1990s (Washington, D.C., 2002)Google Scholar; Nugent, P., Big Men and Small Boys (London, 1995)Google Scholar; Panford, K., IMF-World Bank and Labor's Burdens in Africa (Westport, 2001)Google Scholar.

75. Sawyer, R., Slavery in the Twentieth Century (London, 1986), 77–80Google Scholar.

76. See Mends, E. H. and Ohene-Konadu, K., “The Nature and Problems of Child Labor,” in Twumasi, P. A. et al., eds., Problems and Aspirations of Ghanaian Children (Accra, 1987), 396–417Google Scholar; Anti-Slavery Society, Child Labor in South Africa Child Labor Series, No.7 (1983)Google ScholarPubMed; Miers, S., “Contemporary Slavery,” in Drescher, S. and Engerman, S., eds., A Historical Guide to World Slavery (Oxford, 1998), 166Google Scholar.

77. See, for example, Adenike, O., “Children's Work in Urban Nigeria: A Case Study of Young Lagos Street Traders,” in Myers, W. E., ed., Protecting Working Children (London, 1991), 11–23Google Scholar; A. D. Velenchik, “Apprenticeship Contracts and Credit Markets in Ghana,” Centre for the Study of African Economies working paper series (Oxford: Institute of Economics and Statistics, 1994); Mills, M. H., Cloth Girl (London, 2006)Google Scholar; Ndembi, D. L., Le travail des enfants en Afrique subsaharienne (Paris, 2006)Google Scholar.

78. Panford, IMF-World Bank, 51–86; D. Tajgman, “Structural Adjustment and International Labour Standards: A Case Study of Ghana,” ILO occasional paper; no. 4 (Geneva, 1993). Also, Mezmur, B. D. and Sloth-Nielsen, J., “‘Listen to us’: Arguing the Case for Child Participation in NEPAD,” African Journal of International and Comparative Law 17:1 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79. Examples include N. A. Apt, E. Q. Blavo, and S. Wilson, “Children in Need: A study of Children in Institutional Homes in Ghana,” Centre for Policy and Social Studies, University of Ghana (1998); Heady, C., What is the Effect of Child Labour on Learning Achievement? Evidence from Ghana (Florence, 2000)Google Scholar; Ranjan, R., “The Determinants of Child Labour and Child Schooling in Ghana” Journal of African Economies 4:11 (2002): 561–90Google Scholar.

80. Salah, R., Child Trafficking in West and Central Africa: An Overview (Abuja, 2001)Google Scholar.

81. Fitzgibbon, K., “Modern-day Slavery? The Scope of Trafficking in Persons in Africa,” African Security Review 12:1 (2003), 81–9Google Scholar; Verlet, M., “Growing Up in Ghana: Deregulation and Employment of Children,” in Schlemmer, B., ed., The Exploited Child (London, 2000), 67–82Google Scholar; Y. Marguerat, “The Exploitation of Apprentices in Togo,” in Schlemmer, Exploited, 239–47; M. F. Lange, “The Demand for Labour within the Household: Child Labor in Togo,” in Schlemmer, Exploited, 268–77; S. M. Mbaye and A. S. Fall, “The Disintegrating Social Fabric: Child Labor and Socialization in Senegal,” in Schlemmer, Exploited, 292–99; Levine, S., “‘Picannin’ Wages and Child Labor in the South African Agriculture, Mining, and Domestic Service Industries: 1658 to the Present,” Anthropology of Work Review 17 (1996): 42–50Google Scholar.

82. Ministry of Women's and Children's Affairs (MWCA), “Republic of Ghana's Report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (1997–2003),” (2004), 44, 77.

83. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3517827.stm (last accessed May 19, 2010).

84. A. Keita, “The Implementation of ILO Child Labour Standards in Africa: Mali—an Assessment from a Socio-Legal Perspective,” in Nesi, Nogler, and Pertile, Child Labour, 347–68.

85. Sislin, J. and Murphy, K., Approaches to Reducing the Use of Forced Or Child Labor (Washington, D.C., 2009), 31–55Google Scholar.

86. Richards, P., “Ecological Change and the Politics of African Land Use,” African Studies Review 26:2 (1983): 1–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beinart, W., “Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development: A Southern African Exploration, 1900–1960,” Journal of Southern African Studies 11:1 (1984):52–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vaughan, M., The Story of an African Famine (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 50–76Google Scholar.

87. Andvig, J., “An Essay on Child Labour in Sub-Saharan Africa—A Bargaining Approach,” Norwegian Institute of International Affairs Working Paper 613 (Oslo, 2000)Google Scholar.

88. ILO Convention No. 182 concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour (Adopted June 17, 1999), with its additional optional protocols.

89. M. Dottridge and O. Feneyrol, “Action to Strengthen Indigenous Child Protection Mechanisms in West Africa to Prevent Migrant Children from Being Subjected to Abuse,” (May 2007), 14.

90. For African attitudes to human rights see, Englund, H., Prisoners of Freedom (Berkeley, 2006), 25–70Google Scholar. Also, Ibhawoh, B., “Between Culture and Constitution: Evaluating the Cultural Legitimacy of Human Rights in the African State,” Human Rights Quarterly 22:3 (2000): 838–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91. Mutua, M., “The Banjul Charter and the African Cultural Fingerprint: An Evaluation of the Language of Duties,” Virginia Journal of International Law 35 (1995): 339–80Google Scholar; Odinkalu, A. C. and Christensen, C., “The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights: The Development of its Non-State Communication Procedures,” Human Rights Quarterly 20:2 (1998): 235–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92. Cobbah, J. A. M., “African Values and Human Rights Debate: An African Perspective,” Human Rights Quarterly 9 (1987): 328CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93. Kaime, T., The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (Pretoria, 2009)Google Scholar.

94. Hilson, G., “‘A Load Too Heavy’: Critical Reflections on the Child Labor Problem in Africa's Small-scale Mining Sector,” Children and Youth Services Review 30:11 (2008): 1233–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95. Bhalotra, S. and Heady, C., “Child Farm Labor: The Wealth Paradox,” World Bank Economic Review 17:2 (2003): 197 − 227CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bourdillon, M., “Children and Work: A Review of Current Literature and Debates,” Development and Change 37:6 (2006): 1201 − 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96. Keilland, A. and Tovo, M., Children at Work in Africa (Boulder, CO, 2006)Google Scholar; Myers, W. E., “The Right Rights? Child Labor in a Globalizing World,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 575 (2001): 38 − 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97. Hilson, “‘A Load Too Heavy’,” 1235.

98. Grootaert, C. and Kanbur, R., “Child Labor—An Economic Perspective,” International Labour Review 134 (1995): 200Google Scholar; Myers, W., ed., Protecting Working Children (London, 1991)Google Scholar.

99. Mutua, M., “Human Rights in Africa: The Limited Promise of Liberalism,” African Studies Review 51 (2008): 17–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100. Grootaert and Kanbur, “Child Labor,” 200: It “is now well accepted by international agencies addressing the problem of child labour, such as UNICEF and ILO,” that “[i]t is indeed unlikely that any one approach will succeed everywhere and the balance between legal and economic measures needs to be adapted to the incidence of child labour, the type of prevalent work and work arrangements, and market conditions.”

101. Bonnet, M., “Child Labour in Africa,” International Labour Review 132 (1993): 388Google Scholar.

102. Bellamy, “The state,” 36–7, 41.

103. Bellamy, “The state,” 4: “Because the causes of child labour are complex, the solution must be comprehensive.”

104. Mendelievich, E., ed., Children at Work (Geneva, 1979)Google Scholar; Rogers, G. and Standing, G., eds., Child Work, Poverty and Underdevelopment (Geneva, 1981)Google Scholar; Bequele, A. and Boyden, J., eds., Combating Child Labor (Geneva, 1988)Google Scholar; ILO, World Labour Report (Geneva, 1992)Google Scholar; UNICEF, The State of the World's Children (Oxford, 1991)Google ScholarPubMed.

105. ILO/IPEC, “Combating Child Labor,” 1.

106. Catholic Action for Street Children (CASC) and UNICEF, “The Exodus: The Growing Migration of Children from Ghana's Rural Areas to the Urban Centres” (Accra, 1998), 1.

107. ILO/IPEC, “Combating Child Labor in Cocoa Growing” (Geneva, 2005).

108. L. Bjerkan and C. Gironde, “Achievements and Setbacks in the Fights Against Child Labour: Assessment of the Oslo Conference on Child Labour October 27–30, 1997,” Fafo Report 439 (Oslo, 2004).

109. N. A. Apt, E. Q. Blavo, and S. K. Opoku, “Street Children in Accra: A Survey Report on Street Children,” Department of Sociology, University of Ghana (1991); N. A. Apt and M. Grieco, “Listening to the Girls on the Streets Tell Their Own Story—What Will Help Them Most,” The Centre for Social Policy Studies, University of Ghana (1997).

110. Agarwal, S. et al., Bearing the Weight: The Kayayoo—Ghana's Working Girl Child (Accra, 1997)Google Scholar.

111. “The Ghana NGO Coalition on the Rights of the Child exists to ensure the promotion and protection of the rights of children in Ghana through advocacy, public education and awareness creation, membership capacity building and partnership-building with Government, Civil Society organizations, development partners and with children themselves.” Source: Promotional material on the GNCRC in the possession of the author.

112. N. H. Blunch and D. Verner, “Revisiting the Link Between Poverty and Child Labour: The Ghanaian Experience,” World Bank, Washington, D.C. (2000); UNICEF, “First Consolidated Donor Report on the UNICEF Global Child Labour Programme: Accomplishments and Lessons Learned (1999)” (New York: Programme Division/Child Protection Section, June 2000); UNICEF, “Evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme on Child Labour (1997–1999)” (New York: Evaluation, Policies and Planning Series, N°EPP-2000–005, May 2000).

113. Amorim, A., Murray, U., Bland, J., eds., “Girl Child Labour in Agriculture, Domestic Work and Sexual Exploitation: Rapid Assessments on the Cases of the Philippines, Ghana and Ecuador,” Girl Child Labour Studies 1 (ILO, 2004), 215Google Scholar.

114. L. Guarcello et al., “School to Work Transition in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Overview,” (ILO-UNICEF-World Bank, 2005).

115. (CASC) and UNICEF, “The Exodus,” 54–62. A number of reports I collected seem never to have circulated beyond Ghana. For example, N. Apt Van Ham, E. Q. Blavo, S. K. Opoku, “Street Children in Accra: A Survey Report” (n.d.). http://www.unicef.org/magic/bank/case060.html for “Curious Minds.” (last accessed May 19, 2010).

116. For example, D. F. A. Glikpoe, “Strangers' Fires: A Drama on Child Trafficking and Child Labour” (n.d.); E. Oguaa, “Study on Children in Fishing in Yeji Fishing Communities” (2001); T. Appiah-Mensah and M. Ackumey, “Research Report on Streetism in Madina” (Actionaid, n.d.); C. B. Lloyd and A. J. Gage-Brandon, “Does Sibsize Matter?: The Implications of Family Size for Children's Education in Ghana” (Population Council, 1992).

117. Bøås, M. and Huser, A., Child Labor and Cocoa Production in West Africa (Oslo, 2006), 42Google Scholar.

118. Founded in 1977, APPLE is a “non-governmental organization based in Ghana, West Africa. … It is committed to the principle that researches regional and community development needs and mounts responsive programmes in rural communities development that includes such components as non formal education, production of learning materials, rural extension work and training for cottage industry development for non literate audiences.” Source: project leaflet in possession of author.

119. C. Bellamy, “The State of the World's Children” (Oxford, 1997). In Benin, for example, Roger Ouensavi and Anne Kielland were surprised by findings that questioned the very link between poverty and economic migration. R. Ouensavi and A. Kielland, “Child Labor Migration from Benin: Magnitude and Determinants” (World Bank, 2001), 31.

120. Basu and Van, “The Economics of Child Labor.”

121. ILO/IPEC, “Combating Child Labor,” 2.

122. ILO/IPEC, “Combating Child Labor,” 1.

123. T. Appiah-Mensah, “Research Report on Streetism in Madina” (Accra, n.d.); N. Apt van Ham, “Street Children in Accra: A Survey Report” (Accra, n.d.)

124. For example, Chatterjee, S. and Raghavan, S., “A Taste of Slavery: How Your Chocolate May be Tainted,” Knight Ridder Washington Bureau (June 24, 2001)Google Scholar.

125. International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, “Child Labour in the Cocoa Sector of West Africa: A Synthesis of Findings in Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria” (Accra, 2002).

126. Mull, L. D. and Kirkhorn, S. R., “Child Labor in Ghana Cocoa Production: Focus upon Agricultural Tasks, Ergonomic Exposures, and Associated Injuries and Illnesses,” Public Health Reports 120 (2005): 650CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

127. Bøås and Huser, Child Labor, 7.

128. Off, C., Bitter Chocolate (New York, 2006)Google Scholar.

129. http://www.cocoainitiative.org/images/stories/pdf/harkin%20engel%20protocol.pdf (last accessed May 19, 2010).

130. The ICI's website mission statement: “To oversee and sustain efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labour and forced labour in the growing and processing of cocoa beans and their derivative products”: http://www.cocoainitiative.org/our-mission.html (last accessed May 19, 2010).

131. For example, leather soccer balls (Atlanta Agreement), rugs (RugMark), diamonds (Kimberely Process).

132. http://www.cocoatree.org/lifeonacocoafarm/helpingkidshelpingfamilies.asp (last accessed May 19, 2010).

133. http://www.laborrights.org/files/COCOA06Critique.pdf (last accessed May 19, 2010).

134. Bales, K., Understanding Global Slavery (Berkeley, CA, 2005), 81–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bales, K., Ending Slavery (Berkeley, CA, 2007), 196Google Scholar.

135. “Report on Existing Partners and Interventions in Child Trafficking in Ghana,” based on a two-day workshop held February 23–24, 2006, at La Beach Hotel, Accra. (Accra, March 2006)

136. International Organization for Migration, “Yeji Trafficked Children Project,” Updated Circular Report (2005)Google Scholar.

137. The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (also referred to as the Trafficking Protocol) is a protocol to the Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. It is one of the two Palermo protocols, the other one being the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, adopted by the United Nations in Palermo, Italy, in 2000. See UNICEF Innocenti Insight, “Trafficking in Human Beings, Especially Women and Children in Africa,” 2nd Edition (Florence, 2005), 1–3.

138. J. A. Mohammed and A. A. Apusigah, “Report of Baseline Study on Human Trafficking and Forced Labour in Northern Ghana,” (January 2005).

139. Mohammed and Apusigah, “Report of Baseline.”

140. Hesse, H., “600 Ghanaian children in Slavery,” Junior Graphic (November 8–14, 2000)Google Scholar; Issahaq, M., “Human Trafficking in Upper East,” Accra Mail (March 4, 2002)Google Scholar.

141. ILO/IPEC and the Subregional Project on Combating the Trafficking of Children in West and Central Africa, “Local Capacity Building for the Prevention of Cross-border Child Trafficking in 30 Border Communities between Ghana and Togo and between Benin and Togo,” (January 2004), 2.

142. Atuguba et al., “Review,” 8. Also, UNICEF, “La Traite d'Enfants en Afrique de l'Ouest: Reponse Politiques,” (Florence, 2002), 5.

143. Ark Foundation (http://www.arkfoundationgh.org/ last accessed May 19, 2010); Parent and Child Foundation (http://www.parentandchildfoundation.org/ last accessed May 19, 2010).

144. R. A. Atuguba et al., (Legal Resources Centre-Ghana), “Review of Trafficking-Related Legislation and Policies in Ghana,” (2005), 42.

145. Atuguba et al., “Review,” 43: “Trafficked women and children are usually sold or delivered into servitude by their parents.” See also Ouensavi and Kielland, “Child Labor Migration,” 31.

146. The best example comes from neighboring Togo. Plan-Togo, “For the Price of a Bike,” 20.

147. See B. Dabiré, “Le confiage des enfants, alternative à une transition de crise?” (Paris, 2001): 407–21.

148. S. Sarpong, “Ghana: Soaring Cases of Child Labour,” http://www.newsfromafrica.org/newsfromafrica/articles/art_1034.html (last accessed May 19, 2010).

149. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1560392.stm (last accessed May 19, 2010); http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1281391.stm (last accessed May 19, 2010); http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/412628.stm (last accessed May 19, 2010); Le Monde, “Beninese Ship Children Were Slaves,” Afro1 News (May 1, 2001).

150. Teiga, M., “Cotonou, capitale africaine du trafic d'enfants,” Courrier International 641 (February 13, 2003)Google Scholar, drawn from a Cotonou paper, La Montagne.

151. For further discussion of the claim about “200,000” children see “Introduction” to Lawrance and Roberts, eds., Trafficking Women and Children, forthcoming.

152. For example, Global March Against Child Labor, “Report on the Worst Forms of Child Labor: Ghana” (2004). The most frequently cited source was US Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

153. International Organization for Migration, “New IOM Figures on the Global Scale of Trafficking,” Trafficking in Migrants 23 (April 2001)Google Scholar.

154. Personal Email Communication with Wendy Davies, Plan International, March 25, 2009. See also, A. M. J. Van Gaalen, “Review of Initiatives to Combat Child Trafficking by Members of the Save the Children Alliance” (Montreal, 2003).

155. ASI “Projet Sous-Régional de Lutte contre le Travail et le Trafic des Enfants Domestiques” (April 2003), inaugurated in Lomé, Togo, 2001, included the following domestic NGO partners in Benin, Ghana, Gabon, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Togo.

156. See I. Nagel, “Kinderhandel in Westafrika: Bericht einer Recherche zum Thema” (Osnabruck, 2000).

157. Les Associations d'Enfants et Jeunes Travailleurs is coordinated by Enda TM Jeunesse Action and financed by grants from Caritas, Enda Tiers Monde, Save the Children Suède, SKN Hollande, Terre des Hommes Genève et l'Union Européenne.

158. Catholic Action for Street Children and UNICEF, “The Exodus: The Growing Migration of Children from Ghana's Rural Areas to the Urban Centres” (1999); ILO/IPEC, “Combating Trafficking in Children for Labour Exploitation in West and Central Africa. Synthesis Report. Based on Studies of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Togo,” (Geneva: ILO, 2001), 33–4, 67–8; UNICEF, “La Traite d'Enfants en Afrique,” 6.

159. Thirty countries were formally surveyed 1994–2000 by the ILO, including ten African countries: L. Veil, “Problématique du travail et du trafic des enfants domestiques en Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre” (UNICEF 1998); W. Tengy, “Ghana Country Study: Combating the Trafficking in Children for Labour Exploitation in West and Central Africa” (ILO/IPEC, 2000).

160. ILO/IPEC, “Combating Trafficking.”

161. ASI, “Projet Sous-Régional,” 5–6: “Le projet a couvert six pays (Bénin, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Niger et Togo) qui ont été identifiés lors des recherches nationales et sous-régionales comme constituant des lieux d'envoi, de passage et de destination des enfants victimes de trafic.”

162. ASI, “Projet Sous-Régional de Lutte contre le Travail et le Trafic des Enfants Domestiques” (2003); ASI, “The Cocoa Industry in West Africa: A history of exploitation” (2004); Riisøen, K. H., Hatløy, A., and Bjerkan, L., “Travel to Uncertainty: A Study of Child Relocation in Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Mali,” FAFO Research (Oslo, 2004)Google Scholar.

163. Atuguba et al., “Review,” 7.

164. Brown, C. L., Moral Capital (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006)Google Scholar.

165. UNESCO, “Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking,” (May 20, 2002).

166. See Torg, C. S., “Human Trafficking Enforcement in the United States,” Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law 14 (2006), 503Google Scholar.

167. Fitzgibbon, “Modern-Day Slavery?” 88.

168. HRW, “Togo,” 46–7.

169. ILO/IPEC, “Combating Trafficking,” 36, 45.

170. Plan-Togo, “For the Price of a Bike,” 37.

171. UNICEF Innocenti Insight, “Trafficking in Human Beings,” 20.

172. ASI, “Projet Sous-Régional,” 20.

173. HRW, “Togo,” 46.

174. ASI, “Projet Sous-Régional,” 21–3.

175. TdH, “Les petites mains des carrières,” 34–40.

176. IRIN, “Anti-trafficking law alters routes, not flow,” January 12, 2009. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82319 (last accessed May 19, 2010).

177. MWCA, “FACTSHEET: The Human Trafficking Act (Act 694), 2005,” Compiled by Sylvester Kyei-Gyamfi, Department of Children (Accra, 2007). http://www.mowacghana.net/?q=node/21 (last accessed May 19, 2010).

178. Republic of Ghana, Human Trafficking Act of 2005 (Act 694), Article 1, Subsection 1 (a) and (b). See Human Trafficking Act, 2005 (Act 694), Government Printer, Assembly Press, Accra 2005 (GPC/A444/300/8/2005).

179. GPC/A444/300/8/2005, Human Trafficking Act of 2005 (Act 694), Art.1, Sub.2–4.

180. Whereas Nigeria's Child Rights Act (2003) also criminalizes child trafficking, in only twenty of the country's thirty-six states has the law been enacted. TIPR 2009: 226, 254.

181. TIPR 2009: 226–7.

182. R. P Andrew and B. N. Lawrance, “Anti-Trafficking Legislation in Sub-Saharan Africa between Paradigm and Remedy: A Preliminary Analysis,” in Lawrance and Roberts, eds., Trafficking Women and Children, forthcoming.

183. Human Trafficking (Amendment) Bill, Government Printer, Assembly Press, Accra 2007 (GPC/A464/350/9/2007); T. E. Amuzu, “What Does Human Trafficking Mean In Ghana?” Legal Resources Centre-Ghana/ILO Concept Paper no. 1 on the Human Trafficking Act (2006).

184. Danish Immigration Service, “Protection of Victims of Trafficking in Ghana” (Copenhagen, 2008), 8: “The Attorney-General's Department explained that during the passage of Act 694 the words ‘for the purpose of exploitation’ were mistakenly left out. The effect of this omission was that the definition of human trafficking was not in accord with the internationally agreed definition of human trafficking in the Palermo Protocol.”

185. Merry, Human Rights, 1.

186. http://allafrica.com/stories/201002011564.html (last accessed May 19, 2010).

187. For controversy surrounding Ghana's domestic violence legislation, see Hodžić, S., “The Logics of Controversy: Gender Violence, Women's Rights, and the Frictions of Ghanaian Advocacy,” in Burrill, E. S., Roberts, R. L. and Thornberry, E., eds., Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Athens, 2010)Google Scholar forthcoming; Stafford, N. K., “Permission for Domestic Violence: Marital Rape in Ghanaian Marriages,” Women's Rights Law Reporter 29 (2008): 63–75Google Scholar; Ampofo, A. A., “Collective Activism: The Domestic Violence Bill becoming Law in Ghana,” African and Asian Studies 7:4 (2008): 395–421CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

188. TIPR, 2009, 51.

189. For the child rights act, see Laird, S., “The 1998 Children's Act: Problems of Enforcement in Ghana,” British Journal of Social Work 32 (2002): 893–905CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

190. For a critique of the “moral panic” and sex trafficking, see Kempadoo, K., “Introduction: From Moral Panic to Global Justice: Changing Perspectives on Trafficking,” Kempadoo, K. et al., eds., Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered (Boulder, CO, 2005)Google Scholar.

191. Danish Immigration Service, “Protection of Victims of Trafficking in Ghana,” 8: “Edward Amuzu, LRC, explained that … pressure from foreign governments, mainly the United States, helped in promulgating the Act.” For USAID action on trafficking, see USAID, “Trafficking in Persons: The USAID Strategy for Response,” (February 2003) PD-ABX-358.

192. Ritualo et al., “Measuring Child Labor.”