Ghanaian Children in Internet Pornography

The National Coordinator of the International Labour Organisation Action Programme Against Forced Labour and Trafficking in West Africa Eric Okrah, has said information reaching his office indicate that there are a lot of Ghanaian children involved in pornography on the internet.

Children he said are lured into the act of sending pornographic material on themselves to their friends when they start chatting with such people on the internet.

The photos are then posted to the World Wide Web showing the children in pornographic poses.

If you see the photos INTERPOL sent to my office you would be surprised that Ghanaian children could do that," he said.

He has therefore asked parents to be vigilant on the activities of their children who visit internet cafes where they have access to all forms of pornographic material which they in turn copy.

Okrah was speaking at a meeting in Accra on Child labour and trafficking, a fortnight ago. It was organised by the Women in Broadcasting (WIB) in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

He also said a lot of children are being used as drug carriers and drug pushers, since children are less suspected to be carrying drugs by security agencies.

He said the UN convention on the rights of the Child recognizes the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation or any work that is hazardous to their health or would interfere with their education.

Okrah also asked parents to invest in the education of their children as against putting up houses and other forms of properties. "It is better to put their investment in the person through education rather than leaving the person a house," he said.

He said as a result of parental neglect many children have found themselves on the streets making ends meet through ways that would not guarantee a good future for them.

He said child labour is exploitative, but attractive because children are vulnerable. "Child labour is cheap, Children will not form trade unions and fight for their rights." He explained.

He disclosed that there is a distinction between child labour and child work. While child labour interrupts a child's education, and is sometimes harmful to the child's health, child work refers to the light duties children perform under the supervision of their families.

Children aged 13 years can engage in light work, that is not harmful to their health and children aged 15 and above can be fully employed upon completion of basic school.

The Worst forms of child labour in Ghana include child trafficking, domestic servitude, street work, surface mining, quarrying and children in agriculture among others.

According to the Ghana Child Labour Survey Report 2000, over one million children are engaged in child labour in Ghana.

Out of this 242,074, between the ages of 13 to 17 are engaged in mining, quarrying, hotel, restaurants and fishing. Again about 220,891 children are engaged in night work while 14, 221 of them work for more than four hours a day. In addition, 254,447 of them are engaged in other economic activities.

A private legal Practitioner Geogette Francois, contributing to the discussions, said although Ghana was the first to ratify the UN convention on the rights of the child, people have gone unpunished for violating it. She pointed out that, issues affecting children engaged in employment are human rights issues, and must worry all Ghanaians.

The President of WIB, Sarah Akrofi-Quarcoo on her part asked journalists to be interested in child labour issues since children are an important group in the entire society. "When we are all old and gone, the children of today will take over the administration of the country and we should equip them with the skills to do so effectively," she said.

The issue of child labour especially in the West Coast of Africa is giving the continent a bad image.

A couple of years ago, a ship was found on the high seas of West Africa carting Malian children like goods to work in cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast. What made the situation more serious was that all the children were of school going age. This news led to threats of boycotts of cocoa products from West Africa by the international chocolate consumers associations.

Afraid to lose their businesses, the International Confectionery Association (ICA) has formed a partnership with other stakeholders in the cocoa industry to curb the menace of child labour in cocoa plantations in West Africa.

Thus a project dubbed the West African Cocoa/Agriculture Project (WACAP) has been initiated.

As a sub-regional project under the International Labour Organisation (ILO)'s International Programme on Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), it aims among others at preventing and eliminating the worst forms of child labour in the cocoa sector and other agricultural sub-sectors in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroun, Guinea and Nigeria.

According to ILO estimates, more than 250 million children between the ages of five and 14 are engaged in economic activities throughout the world.

More than half of them are said to work full time every day all year round.

Again about 70 percent of these children are engaged in agricultural activities, which generally involve long working hours for meagre wages and often under hazardous working conditions.