GHANA-NIGERIA:
Security officials discuss child
trafficking
ACCRA, 22 October (IRIN) - Security officials
from Ghana and Nigeria
were
meeting in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, to discuss
greater
collaboration
to curb increasing child trafficking in and out of
West African
countries.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO),
which coordinated the
meeting, said it had become necessary to work
with security agencies
from
both countries to burst child trafficking syndicates.
"We need to put in place wide networks of
informants to work with
security
services. Laws and sanctions on child trafficking
need to be revised
constantly in order to tackle this problem," ILO's
head in Ghana,
Cornelius Dzakpasu, said at the meeting on
Tuesday.
He said since child trafficking was a cross border
problem, ILO would
focus on creating networks among the security
and law enforcement
agencies
in neighbouring West African countries. This
would in turn lead to
agreements on repatriation procedures of freed
trafficked children.
Officials said child trafficking had increased within
the subregion,
but
accurate figures on the numbers of persons
trafficked were not readily
unavailable. Many of the trafficked children, they
added, were employed
in
Ghana's fishing industry, the cocoa plantations in
Cote d'Ivoire and
stone
quarries in Nigeria.
"We have seen numbers of about 400,000
children involved in labour in
the
West African Region. These figures are hardly
accurate since they are
gathered on baseline estimates," Mark Taylor, a
US State Department
Specialist in Trafficking of Persons, who was
attending the meeting
told
IRIN.
"Trafficking is illicit. The activity is underground
and it is very
difficult to find and track people who have been
trafficked," Taylor
added.
He said it had become more difficult to tackle
child trafficking within
the less organised sector of domestic labour. It
had also become
equally
more difficult to track the movement of girls within
West African and
to
Europe, who are trafficked for commercial sex
exploitation.
In Ghana, where hundreds of trafficked children
were freed in September
from employment by fishermen along the banks of
the Volta River, a
draft
Trafficking In Persons Prevention Bill is currently
at initial stages.
Ghana's Interior Minister Hackman
Owusu-Agyemang, who attributed child
trafficking to poverty and the emergence of
refugee camps in the
subregion
due to increasing civil conflicts, called for more
drastic efforts to
stop
the activity.
"We need an effective witness protection scheme
and safe houses. This
will
make it safe for child victims and witnesses to
speak out against the
syndicates, allowing for offenders to be
prosecuted and punished,"
Owusu-Agyemang told the meeting.
The Special Assistant to Nigeria's President on
Human Trafficking and
Child Labour, Elizabeth Dayo Akinmoyo told
IRIN: "Nigeria's size and
its
cultural and religious structures make it very
difficult to track down
this problem, though we are creating a lot of
awareness on how to
tackle
this menace."
"In recent weeks, our police, acting on tip-offs
raided a camp at Ogun
State in western Nigeria where 115 children were
freed and repatriated
to
their home country in Benin. We are doing our
best," Akinmoyo added.
The US government has meanwhile
acknowledged the efforts of some West
African countries to curb the menace of
trafficking. It however said
the
efforts appeared to be slower than expected.
The 2003 US Department of Labour's annual
child labour report and the
US
Department of State's Trafficking In Persons
report released, recently
highly ranked two sub-Saharan countries, Ghana
and Benin, among
countries
combating the trafficking of persons.
"This ranking means that these two countries meet
the minimum standards
for government action towards the elimination of
trafficking," US
Ambassador to Ghana, Mary Carlin Yates said
WEST AFRICA:
Massive campaign to protect 15 million
children from polio
ABIDJAN, 22 October (IRIN) - A three-day
vaccination campaign was
launched
in five West African countries on Wednesday to
protect 15 million
children
from a new polio outbreak spreading from Nigeria,
the World Health
Organization (WHO) said .
The US $10 million campaign aims to vaccinate every
child in Benin,
Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo, against the
virus, which has been
genetically traced to Kano state in northern Nigeria.
The vaccination drive by the Global Polio Eradication
Initiative after
nearly a dozen children were paralysed by the polio
outbreak in Burkina
Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo.
WHO said one case had also been reported in Chad
and mass vaccinations
would be conducted there and in Cameroon in
mid-November.
"Nigeria is now the country with the greatest number
of polio cases in
the
world," said David Heymann, the Representative of
the Director-General
of
WHO for Polio Eradication.
"Polio continues to spread within Nigeria to areas
which were
polio-free
and also to neighbouring countries. Polio and other
infectious diseases
know no national boundaries. We face a grave public
health threat and
our
goal of a polio-free world is in jeopardy," he added.
WHO said the outbreak had also spread within
Nigeria, most worryingly
to
the commercial capital Lagos, a city of 10 million
inhabitants, which
had
been free of polio for two years.
Epidemiologists blamed the resurgence of polio in
Nigeria on
insufficient
immunization coverage in the north, where some
Muslim organisations
have
opposed vaccination campaigns.
WHO said monitoring data showed that in one
un-named state of Nigeria
only
16 percent of children had been sufficiently.
In July, the Supreme Council for Shari'ah in Nigeria
(SCSN) and the
Kaduna
State Council of Imams and Ulama urged Muslims to
resist the
government's
polio immunization programme, alleging that vaccines
being used were
intended to sterilise children and control population
growth.
To overcome this belief, public health organisations,
working with top
Muslim doctors in the region, conducted widely
publicised evaluations
of
the vaccines to prove to the public that there was
nothing sinister
about
them.
Negative reaction to polio immunization has also been
noted in
neighbouring Niger, especially in Maradi and Zinder
near the Nigerian
border.
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has been using
radio broadcasts and has
working with traditional chiefs to disseminate
information in Niger on
the
importance of vaccinations.
Despite this latest setback, epidemiologists are
convinced that polio
can
be eradicated from Nigeria by the end of next year.
Last month, following a meeting with senior
epidemiologists from the
Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the Nigerian health
minister gave
a
commitment to eradicate the disease in the country by
end of 2004.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is spearheaded
by WHO, Rotary
International, the US Centres for Disease Control and
Prevention and
UNICEF.
Polio is now present in only seven countries down
from over 125 when
the
initiative was launched in 1988.