Sexual exploitation of children is criminal

Article: Salome Donkor
Felia (not her real name) is a 14-year-old girl who was lured from the village to Accra by a woman who promised her parents to offer her employment as a Chop Bar assistant in the city.
Due to financial constraints, Felia’s parents who have five other children to cater for, agreed to the proposal and allowed their daughter to travel to the city with the woman.
Unknown to Felia, her madam had additional responsibilities for her in the evenings after the close of work. She was made to sleep with men, both youngsters and adults in a dilapidated wooden structure for money which was collected by her madam.
Felia was in the business for one year after which she escaped from her madam and joined other girls on the streets of Accra to carry loads to earn a living; Unknown to her, she was pregnant and is now a teenage mother with no one to care for her and the child.
What Felia experienced is known as the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of children which is a form of forced labour whereby children aged below 18 are forced to have sex with adults and juveniles and in return money is paid to a third party who usually acts as the mediator.
A source at the Greater Accra Regional Office of the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service confirmed in an interview that the unit occasionally received reported cases of children who were exploited sexually for commercial purposes and said four such cases were reported from a place called “Red Light” at Kwabenya in Accra. He said most of the time the mediator tended out to be “madams” who were engaged in child trafficking.
The source said although the practice was a criminal offence that warranted the prosecution of clients and the mediators since it amounted to defilement, indecent sexual assault and having unnatural carnal knowledge of a child, it was difficult for the police to arrest the perpetrators because nobody came out to report.
Available literature from the Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia indicates that a Convention was drawn up after the first World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation held in Stockholm in 1996 and the Congress defined Commercial Sexual Exploitation of children, which was adopted in the declaration at the congress as ‘sexual abuse by the adult and remuneration in cash or kind to the child or a third person or persons.
The child involved is treated as a sexual object and as a commercial object. The act includes the prostitution of children; child pornography; and other forms of transactional sex where a child engages in sexual activities to have key needs fulfilled, such as food, shelter or access to education.
It includes forms of transactional sex where the sexual abuse of children is not stopped or reported by household members, due to benefits derived by the household from the perpetrator and it also potentially includes arranged marriages involving children under the age of 18 years, where the child has not freely consented to marriage and where the child is sexually abused.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 182 classifies commercial sexual exploitation of children as one of the worst forms of child labour in the world. Child prostitution and child pornography are examples of commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Article 25 (1) of the 1992 Constitution stipulates that “All persons shall have the right to equal educational opportunities and facilities and with a view to achieving the full realisation of the right” 25 (1) (a) states that “basic education shall be free, compulsory and available to all”.
Sections of the constitution also enjoins Parliament to enact such laws that are necessary to ensure that “parents undertake their natural right and obligation of care, maintenance and upbringing of their children in co-operation with such institutions as Parliament may, by law, prescribe in such manner that in all cases the interest of the children are paramount”, 28 (1) (c) , while 28 (2) states that “Every child has the right to be protected from engaging in work that constitutes a threat to his health, education or development.”
Apart from these constitutional provisions, Ghana was the first country to ratify the International Convention on the Rights of Children, while at the national level the Children’s Act 1998 (Act 560) was promulgated to protect the welfare and interest of Ghanaian children.
It is however unfortunate that despite all these measures some children continue to suffer negative acts that constitute criminal practices that demean, degrade and threaten the physical and psychological integrity of children and subject them to emotional trauma.
Apart from that these children are exposed to the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including the deadly HIV/AIDS, apart from becoming teenage mothers and also being denied the right to compulsory basic education.
Recently, International Needs Ghana, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), organised a forum on commercial sexual exploitation of children for some pupils in the Ablekuma South Metro.
The children were educated on the causes, effects and prevention of sexual abuse and were cautioned to desist from acts that could result in unwanted pregnancies or make them victims of sexual exploits by tourists.
Unfortunately, most children engaged in commercial sexual exploitation are lured into the business after they have been trafficked from the rural areas to the cities by traffickers who promise them jobs.
Social workers say the practice was also common in communities around the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Agbogbloshie and Konkomba markets and Tema Station, among others.
The causes of this form of inhuman form of exploitation against children could be complex. Could it be due to severe poverty, low value attached to education, family dysfunction, a cultural obligation to help support the family or the need to earn money to simply survive that make children vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation.
Social workers also say there are other non-economic factors that also push children into commercial sexual exploitation. Children who are at the greatest risk of becoming victims of the practice are those that have previously experienced physical or sexual abuse, a family environment of little protection, where caregivers are absent or where there is a high level of violence or alcohol or drug consumption, which induces boys and girls to run away from home making them highly susceptible to abuse.
When contacted, the Executive Director of Children’s Rights International, Bright Appiah said much as there was the need to create awareness for parents to live up to their parental responsibility and appreciate the consequence of their irresponsible behaviour, it was important to look at the effectiveness of the legal framework that protects children.
He said children in Ghana like other citizens, did not just live in a social environment, but rather the laws must be strengthened and implemented to protect children.
He said structures must be put in place to counsel and rehabilitate children who were victims of such exploitation so that they would not consign themselves to such kind of life.
It is obvious that the people who contribute to the exploitation of a child include parents and other family members, friends, peers and teachers, as well as procurers, brothel managers, traffickers and those who engage in sex acts with a child. All these groups of people therefore have respective roles to play to clamp down on commercial sexual exploitation.