MODERN SLAVERY

Despite the fact that slavery was abolished by most countries 150 years ago, there are more than 45 million people trapped in modern slavery today. One in four of these is a child. Modern slavery is a human rights violation that is defined as the recruitment, movement, harboring or receiving of children, women or men through the use of force, coercion, abuse of vulnerability, deception or other means for the purpose of exploitation. Farming, fishing, mining, domestic servitude, sex work, manual labor, and factory work are among the most prevalent forms of modern slavery.

In Ghana, where The Rescue List takes place, there are 100,000 people living in modern slavery. Of these, 18,000 are children enslaved to fishermen on Lake Volta. Many of the children are trafficked into modern slavery by families living in extreme poverty who believe they are sending their children to a better life.

LAKE VOLTA

In 1965, shortly after Ghana’s independence from Great Britain, the World Bank, the UK, and the United States (including the American corporations Kaiser Aluminum and Reynolds Aluminum) funded the construction of the Akosombo Hydroelectric Dam on the Volta River in Ghana. The main goal of the dam was to power the aluminum industry and spur economic growth. The dam created Lake Volta. Spanning 3,000 square miles in the central region of Ghana, Lake Volta is the largest man-made lake on Earth.

While the Akosombo Hydroelectric Dam Project was sold as “the largest single investment in the economic plans of Ghana,” the flooding of the Volta River Basin forced the relocation of 80,000 people from 700 villages. This loss of land resulted in the dismantling of the region’s primary economic practices from riparian fishing and agriculture.

Meanwhile, coastal fishermen began moving inland to the lake to fish for tilapia, establishing a direct connection between southern seaside communities and remote villages forming on the shores of Lake Volta. It is through these connections that traffickers now move children from seaside towns, inland to the lake, where they are sold to fishermen for slave labor.

Traffickers target economically disadvantaged families, often single mothers struggling to meet their family’s basic needs, and coerce them to send their children to the lake where they say they will receive food and clothing, and attend school in exchange for helping out with fishing activities. The traffickers offer a small sum of money in exchange for the child, typically around $20 US dollars. They are often deceptive about how long the child will be away, promising that the child will return home in a few month’s time.

In fact, these children are separated from their families and enslaved indefinitely on the lake, far from their hometowns, with no means of communication or escape. They are fed and clothed minimally, withheld from school, and forced to work long days on fishing boats, setting and pulling in nets. Many children endure physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. It is in this socio-political context that The Rescue List is set.

CRITICAL ECOLOGY & EXTRACTION

The origin of all wealth comes from the natural world we live in—our ecosystem. Ecosystems provide society with soil fertility, food, water, shelter, goods and services, medicines, stability, pleasure, knowledge and leisure. Ecosystems are the essence of our livelihood, and, the primary means of subsistence for millions of people in developing countries all across the world.

To understand child trafficking and slavery on Lake Volta, we must contextualize it historically from a critical ecological lens. Prior to the development of Lake Volta in the mid-twentieth century, the local Akosombo people lived off the land. They settled in villages adjacent to the Volta River and benefited from the occasional river runoff that brought nutrients to the soil. The Volta River was the foundation to their economic, political, and cultural practices. As such, their calendars, primarily agricultural and fishing, were created around the rivers predicted flood and drought season. The river brought not only nutrients to the land, but people and community.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a British explorer, by the name of Albert Kitson, surveyed the land in hopes of extracting natural minerals. Kitson found the land was rich with bauxite and manganese, a central ingredient for making aluminum. Plans to extract the minerals from the land came to fruition in the mid-twentieth century when an American company Valco, Kaiser Aluminum secured a contract with the Ghanaian government to build the Akosombo Dam. The Akosombo Dam would generate enough electricity to power the region, and the American company would gain access to the aluminum while also being exempt from taxes on trade and receiving discounted electricity. The highly contested contract was renegotiated in 2002. Local villagers argue the government sided with the corporations.

The development of the Akosombo Dam transformed the entire ecosystem of the surrounding region. The land is no longer as fertile and agricultural activity has since exhausted the already inadequate soils. As such, the Akosombo Dam significantly affected the livelihood of the agricultural and fishing villages. The shift in ecology drove the displacement and destruction of their community.

RESCUE & RECOVERY

Founded by a Ghanaian survivor of child trafficking, Challenging Heights is a grassroots non-profit organization that rescues trafficked children from modern slavery in Ghana’s fishing industry on Lake Volta. Rescued children are brought to Challenging Heights’ rehabilitation center, which provides medical and psychological care, as well as schooling - a first for nearly all of the children.

While at the shelter, children participate in Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET). NET is a short-term intervention for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) developed by psychotherapists in Germany. It is often used with refugees and asylum seekers in crisis regions where long-term treatment is not possible.

The main activity of NET is establishing the child’s life history. Together, the child and the therapist create a written autobiography detailing the child’s major life events from birth to present. In the lifeline exercise, the child identifies the chronological sequence of positive and negative events along their lifespan by placing symbolic flowers and stones on a string laid out before them.

This lifeline activity allows the children to reconstruct the fragmented memories of traumatic experiences into coherent narrations connected to the chronology of their life story. At the end of treatment, the child is given a written account of their life narration and the therapist keeps a copy.

There are many benefits of NET for survivors of modern slavery. For the children, regaining access to their biography and communicating their history to others enables them to reclaim their identity, and supports self-understanding and self-acceptance. It may also empower them to stand up for their own rights, and the rights of others, as victims and survivors. This form of therapy also aids in survivors overcoming the speechlessness that often comes with surviving trauma. This speechlessness can lead to social isolation. Sharing personal life stories is one of the most powerful ways to create intimacy in relationships. By engaging in a positive sharing relationship with the therapist, the child may find it easier to share their stories with others.