The Coastal Resources Center (CRC), University of Rhode Island (URI) was awarded a
cooperative agreement (AID-641-A-15-00001) from USAID/Ghana on October 21, 2014 to
implement the USAID/Ghana Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP) from
October 2014 to September 2019. URI leads a team of core implementing partners including
two intimately involved in the previous URI-led USAID/Ghana ICFG Initiative: Friends of
the Nation and Hen Mpoano, as well as a new partner SNV Ghana (Netherlands
Development Organization).
One component of the SFMP is the anti-Child Labour and Trafficking dubbed CLaT). Led by
FoN, the CLaT component of the SFMP in the CR will also involve livelihoods activities
conducted by Central and Western Fishmongers ‘Improvement Association (CEWEFIA), a
women-focused organization that has an organizational mandate related to fishing
communities and social welfare; Development Action Association (DAA) a national
women’s advocacy organization; and SNV who will also work in two eastern landing sites of
the CR.
Discussions with the FC leadership (CR), the Department of Social Welfare in Accra, and
local implementing partners during the designing stage of the SFMP, highlighted the problem
of illegal child labour in fishing—especially in the CR. This includes both hazardous fisheries
work by children under age 18 and child trafficking. During focus group discussions held
during project design, participants reported that child labour and child trafficking is prevalent
in the Central Region. Children are being sent to the Volta Lake region to engage in
dangerous fishing practices and are never enrolled in school. Especially vulnerable are single
female-headed households with many children. Migrant fishers often leave women to fend
for themselves and their children, without money for school fees or food. Agents come
2
offering relief in the form of payments and promises to care for the children, but then force
them into hard physical labor in the lake fisheries. Coordinating closely with the Fisheries
Commission Child Labour focal person in Accra, the SFMP will conduct a comprehensive
assessment of the problem in the CR and identify communities and households most
susceptible to such practices and root drivers of the problem. This work will involve a
comprehensive literature review on the problem, identify current actors involved in
addressing this issue, and conduct a number of community meetings as well as a household
survey. Out of that, a behavior change communications initiative will be developed in the CR
on the issue in an effort to make such practices socially unacceptable.
Livelihood activities will be targeted at vulnerable households most likely to engage in such
practices, under the premise that economic hardship is the root cause of the problem. We will
work with social welfare agencies, the Department of Labor and District authorities to bring
social services more forcefully to bear, such as reproductive health education and access to
family planning services and commodities. We will engage the National Steering Committee
on Child Labour, and in the design and roll out of the communications campaign.