Drawing and Narrating: Experiences of Children Rescued From Trafficking on Lake Volta

Abstract

Human trafficking violates the rights of victims and is also a highly debatable issue within academia, legal and policy discourses as well as in professional practice, with a focus on children and the children's agency. Accessing the narratives of survivors, which mirror the trauma endured, feelings and thoughts, is also a crucial concern of professionals in the field of after-trafficking care. At the end of most interventions, reintegration is inevitable. Meanwhile, some children have been found to have returned to the trafficking conditions they were rescued from. This demonstrates a gap in the rescue and return anti-trafficking intervention policies that could be bridged by integrating the voices of survivors into policy formulation and execution. Recognising the importance of survivor narratives, the current study adopting a social constructionist perspective and narrative approach accessed the survivor narratives of five children rescued from trafficking on Lake Volta using drawing. The study found that the children were trafficked in an organised manner, separated from their familiar environment and social capital, and abused enroute and at destination points. The study suggests governmental empowerment of child welfare institutions to work in close contact with families as a preventive measure against child trafficking. A call is also made to the Ghana Education Service and all stakeholders to collaborate in educating children against well-meaning cultures that could be a tool of exploitation.