Human Trafficking: Global Injustice

Never Barnabas Awukudzi was trafficked when he was 10-years-old and forced to work for a fish master on Lake Volta in Ghana. He was rescued by the International Organization of Migration. Never was featured in a segment on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2007, where he talked about the abuse and back-breaking work he endured. Never recently graduated from school and is preparing to take his college entrance exams. This will be Never’s first trip outside of Ghana.

 

Since 2002, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has worked to release more than 760 children, like Never, from the fishing trade around Ghana’s Lake Volta region. Some of the children that have been trafficked are as young as 4-years-of-age. The boys get up at 4am and prepare to go out on the lake to set fishing nets and gather in the fish during a long days’ work. The young girls trafficked into this setting, help cook the fish for market or do whatever other work their masters assign them. None of the boys and girls go to school.

The IOM engages local NGOs to find trafficked children, communicate with local chiefs, arrange for a child’s rescue, and educate the entire village to the wrongful treatment of these children. Once the children are rescued as part of a group, they are taken to Accra for immediate healthcare, rehabilitation, and evaluation. After a 3-month stay, a plan is devised to return them to a family or work out their educational opportunities. A network of individuals and organizations monitor the progress of these children in their new home setting.

 

Dyane Epstein has over 20 years of work experience in national and international program development and management, including over 33 years with the IOM on a variety of migration-related programs and projects. These include emergency and humanitarian response, refugee resettlement, migration and development, and counter-trafficking. She is currently the Chief of Mission for IOM Ghana and previously worked with IOM Zimbabwe and England, and in Japan through the Japanese Exchange and Teaching (JET) program. She started her career in New York as a teacher and program manager for the New York City Board of Education.