Sex Trafficking Rife - Police

Trafficking of girls for the purposes of prostitution is rife in Ghana.

According to the police some young girls are recruited from various parts of the country purposely to undertake prostitution in the cities.


"At the end of the day these girls will have to pay some money to their benefactors for bringing them down," said Head of Women and Juvenile Unit of the Police, Gifty Anim-Botwe in Accra.


"Prostitution is an offence under our law, and every policeman knows that," she said.


Anim-Botwe revealed that some girls also join the trade out of frustration after failing to earn a living as porters and petty traders.


"People are forced to wear attractive clothes and pose by the roadside for clients by those who brought them. Whenever we arrest the girls, they tell us prostitution is more profitable to selling or doing other things," she said.

On the reasons why prostitutes are arrested without their male clients, the Administrator of International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), Gloria Ofori-Boadu said, the law on prostitution is biased against women.


"Sometimes there is discrimination in the law and in the case of prostitution it favours the men," she said.


Ofori-Boadu said there is a need to review the law so that those who patronise the services offered of these prostitutes could be prosecuted.


"Under our Criminal Code, if you allow prostitution to happen under your roof you are also guilty, or if you cause a child to go into prostitution you are also liable for prosecution but all these people have been left out in the prosecution process" she said.


Anim-Botwe said prostitutes suffer a lot on the streets: while some are beaten up for demanding too much money others are killed.

Narrating a case, Anim-Botwe said a prostitute once bit the male organ of a foreigner who subsequently reported the case to the police. She explained that the man had refused to use a condom and the girl had charged a special rate but after the act the man refused to pay resulting in the scuffle.


Some also become slaves to their pimps because they are unable to make enough money to pay them (the pimps) and therefore are afraid to quit the trade.


So what is driving more young women into the commercial sex trade?


A key factor fanning prostitution is poverty, according to the FIDA administrator.


Divorce could force some husbands to throw out their wives and kids and as the women move in kiosks and other unsafe structures with their teenage children, the girls are lured into prostitution to improve their standard of living.

Ofori-Boadu also believes imbalances in education from childhood against girls and lack of opportunities in life have left several women with no marketable skills to earn a living except using their sex organs.


Ofori-Boadu blames the current situation on economic problems such as the Economic Recovery Programme and the Structural Adjustment Programmes, which resulted in loss of jobs and income to several families leading to poverty.


The breakdown of rice factories in the northern part of the country is said to have contributed substantially to the problem of prostitution, she said.


Ofori-Boadu said cultural norms and practices over the years have contributed to the spread of the trade. In the past, Akans provided sex to their bachelors, by employing female slaves. Chiefs paid them but married men were prevented from patronising the female slaves.


Again, rights of passage where young women expose their bodies including their breasts give some men the opportunity to pounce on them and corrupt their innocence, Ofori-Boadu charged.

In addition, early marriages where a child has not received adequate counseling and no income earning skills, often brakes up forcing the young women on to the streets.


Anim-Botwe also believes that some cultural dances such as adowa express some kind of sexual desires which could promote promiscuity.


"The girls are innocent, they just stand wriggling their bodies and they think they are displaying culture but some men read into those things," she reasoned.


What makes prostitution more dangerous in Ghana is that there has not been any cogent research to ascertain the number of girls in the commercial sex trade and there are no serious control mechanisms in place nor consistent plans to encourage the prostitutes to protect themselves from the dangers the trade poses to their lives, Ofori Boadu said.


All over the world, there are statistics on prostitution and measures are put in place to control their activities.