3071-The political economy of new slavery

Amanda Berlan 165
farms – however limited – must be stamped out. More broadly, child
trafficking from the north of Ghana to more affluent towns in the south
such as Accra or Kumasi, is an increasing problem (African Centre for
Human Development, 2002). Most of the trafficked children are taken
to work as kitchen staff, domestic servants, head-load carriers or traders,
and never return to their families. Therefore my recommendation to
policy-makers and campaigning groups would be to focus on the wider
problem of child trafficking in Ghana, and not let the limited child
trafficking on cocoa farms overshadow child trafficking in other sectors.
The other category of work defined in ILO Convention 182, which
applies to cocoa farming in Ghana, is ‘work, which, by its nature or the
circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health,
safety or morals of children’. This is open to interpretation as it relies on
a context-based rather than globally formulated definition of risk and
danger. Each country, after consulting with employers’ and workers’
organizations and other interested parties, is expected to determine
what constitutes such work, although some guidance is given in ILO
Recommendation 190. The recommendation suggests paying special
attention to work that exposes children to physical, psychological or
sexual abuse, or work in an unhealthy environment which may, for
example, expose children to hazardous substances. In the case of cocoa
farming in Ghana dangerous work could consist of exposure to pesticides,
inadequate protective clothing (such as rubber boots), insufficient
nourishment or access to drinking water, actual or threatened physical
violence, long hours, or children working away from close kin (such as
a farmer taking in a child from a poor acquaintance and making him or
her work in exchange for food and shelter). Such types of abuse are
largely poverty-driven, and more common in isolated villages with low
levels of investment and with weak infrastructure, such as villages with
no school or difficult road access. Poor, isolated villages are less likely to
attract adult migrant labourers from the north in the labour-intensive
season and to suffer from a shortage of manpower due to urban migration,
therefore making them more reliant on child labour.
Child labour in this context makes intervention and policy-making
extremely problematic. As outlined in Chapter 1 of this volume, different
kinds of action are required for combating different abuses such as child
labour or enslavement. Child trafficking along set routes by networks of
traffickers is a relatively recent phenomenon (compared to child work),
and is likely to increase unless deterrents such as tough legislation and
means of implementation are put in place. In contrast, child labour
fuelled by poverty cannot be tackled effectively in isolation from its root
causes. Monitoring and law-enforcement have practical limitations in