Enough is Enough: #StopViolenceAgainstChildren

For the third time Anas Aremeyaw Anas has unveiled unspeakable horrors at an orphanage. How many times does the man in the mask have to repeat his undercover feats before the abuse that is happening all over the country in the at least 100 unregistered orphanages is stopped?

How many more children have to suffer before we do something about it?

Orphanages don’t work. In Western Europe they have been closed down decades ago. They are a colonial import to Ghana that does not provide the healthy, loving environment that children need to thrive. Orphanages separate children form community, and they do not help them to prepare for real life. When children in Ghana are evicted from orphanage at age 18 they have no family, no network and often don’t know how to cook or shop for themselves.

In addition and this is the most important point, all over the world, orphanages always create a violent closed environments that are not properly staffed, funded or monitored and abuse can go on for years undetected.  In other words the problem is with model: as long as Ghana has Orphanages, this abuse will continue.

I have personally visited 148 orphanages in Ghana, of which all but ten were illegal at the time, and there were cases of defilement, child on-child violence and carer- to- child violence in every single one I visited, both legal and illegal. Ask any survivor of an orphanage or any volunteer or staff that has stayed in one. They cannot look you in the eye and say it is not happening.

These people keep quiet because there is a giant conspiracy: corrupt orphanages are big business.There are reports of orphanages selling children for illegal adoption at 20k dollars per child, or creating baby farms where teenage female inmates are allowed to fall pregnant so their babies can be given to waiting couples.

I personally have rescued kids destined for sale for rituals or for “export” to Europe for the sex trade, or to cocoa farms or glamasy operators as slave workers.These are not stories: it is a reality in Ghana that concerns the over 4000 children living in residential orphanages and children’s homes.

Faced with such unspeakable horrors as those seen in “Torture home “ and Anas’ previous film “Care- less”, on Countryside Orphanage in Bawjiase, you are probably asking yourself: what can I do?

The general public must stop supporting and donating to orphanages: they must support family care for children. And you must demand that the orphanages are closed (Bawjiase is still operating), and the perpetrators brought to book.

There are testimonials about volunteers who reported Echoing Hills to police and social workers and yet nothing was done because these officials were bribed and accepted to keep quiet. They must face the law.

Government must apply the Care Reform Initiative; close all unlisicenced orphanages as a matter of priority. Government must ensure that they allocate enough money to Social Welfare to care for the mentally ill in small sheltered living family style homes,

Government must fund the care of children properly: what is allocated is a tiny proportion of the budget, and most of it is never distributed.

Government must fund DSW properly so the Regulations, launched with great fanfare by the sector minister on May 13th 2019  are applied to the letter.

Speak to your MP, write to the press and post on social media with the hashtag  #KidsOurFuture. We must all help protect Ghana’s children

By Lisa Lovatt Smith

The author is a journalist turned child rights activist. She has been working in Ghana for the last 18 years, supporting Government to implement the Care Reform Initiative. She is the founder of the NGO OAfrica and the movement #KidsOurFuture.