“πβπππ ππ π ππππππ π‘βππ‘ βππππ , πππ π‘βπππ ππ π ππππππ π‘βππ‘ πππππ ”. ~ Pauleson Utsu
There is a phrase many of us grew up hearing, often said with love, sometimes said as warning: βπππ πππ πππππ πππππππ
.β A child sent to live with an aunt, an uncle, a family friend, not abandoned, but βplaced,β so the story goes, to learn discipline, to learn how to run a home, to become someone useful. A lot of children grew up around this historical background.
But somewhere along the way, for far too many children, βtrainingβ quietly became something else entirely. At Safe Child Advocacy, we have sat with this uncomfortable truth: some of what we have called tradition has, (without fully realizing it), become a hiding place for harm. The child who wakes before everyone else and sleeps after everyone else. The child who is βfamilyβ but never gets treated as one. The child who has learned early, and well never to complain. That silence is the part that stays with him/her the most.
A recent study on child house-helps in Ghana found something both moving and unsettling: many of these children cope not by speaking up, but by praying, by quietly seeking comfort from a kind neighbour, by simply enduring. Itβs resilience, yes. But itβs also a child learning, day by day, that their voice does not matter, that silence is safer than speaking. And once a child believes that, we have already lost the first and most important line of protection: their willingness to tell someone.
This is not a small or rare problem tucked away in a corner of the country. National reporting shows identified trafficking victims in Ghana rose from 574 in 2022 to 944 in 2023, more than half of them are children. Many of these cases begin exactly the way βtrainingβ once did: a child sent to live with someone else, sometimes even with a relativeβs knowledge, and slowly, quietly exploited under a roof that was supposed to be safe.
We have laws. Ghanaβs Human Trafficking Act carries real penalties. But laws alone do not reach a child who has already learned not to speak. The real work happens in homes, in churches and mosques, in classrooms, in the everyday conversations we have with the children around us. It happens when we teach a child, gently and clearly, that βnoβ is allowed; that telling an adult when something feels wrong is not disrespect rather it is bravery.
This is the paradigm shift we at SCA are committed to: not just changing laws, but changing what we stand for. Not just asking children to behave, but asking them how they are really doing, and believing them when they answer. Silence has protected exploitation for too long. It is time we made room for childrenβs voices instead.
