Policies and Politics Around Children’s Work in Ghana

Abstract

This paper explores policy and legislation aimed at preventing, regulating, and abolishing harmful children’s work in Ghana, and the political debates and controversies surrounding these mechanisms. The paper critically interrogates the successes and challenges of previous and current policies and interventions. It concludes that legislation and interventions aimed at preventing hazardous or harmful work should incorporate both the formal legislative rights discourse and the informal, traditional rights discourse to successfully navigate the political terrain, thereby accelerating attainment of common objectives.

Interactions between Child Labour and Schooling: Parental Perceptions in Rural and Urban Ghana

“…Another school of thought contends that children may obtain useful human and psychological capital through the combination of schooling and work in the form of skills, competence, responsibility and self-esteem that make children confident to improve in education and in the future labour market (Adonteng-Kissi, 2022). This argument is reinforced by several studies from developing countries (Tamanja, 2016;Adonteng-Kissi, 2021;Okyere et al, 2021). This research reveals that engaging children in work does not impede education but makes schooling possible for children.…”

“…There are increasing studies on child labour that demonstrate that children view work as a right and as providing the prospect of playing a critical part in the community as well as a rite of passage to adulthood (Abebe, 2019;Okyere et al, 2021). The social-constructivists' standpoint is that it is obstructive to deliberate on the legitimacy of child labour using an absolute binary of 'good or bad' (Huynh et al, 2015).…”

“…This argument positions social policies in the realm of legislation, which is enforced by state institutions such as the law courts, judicial and other legal players, and informal procedures for regulation. It is understood that law must cover and express cultural information since it is characteristically normative, describing individuals' rights, responsibilities, and freedoms (Okyere et al, 2021, Turner, 2021. If policy and legislation do not express the cultural and social realities that they are expected to protect and explain, laws are either enforced in a strict manner, or blatantly disregard, misapply, and violate the culture of the people (Bourdillon and Carothers, 2019).…”

“…If policy and legislation do not express the cultural and social realities that they are expected to protect and explain, laws are either enforced in a strict manner, or blatantly disregard, misapply, and violate the culture of the people (Bourdillon and Carothers, 2019). Child labourers have protested that policies purportedly designed to safeguard their welfare rather make them vulnerable (Okyere et al, 2021). They usually do not accept International Labour (ILO) benchmarks since the opinions of children and childhood that these seek to express do not fit into the realities of the developing world (Bourdillon and Carothers, 2019).…”

“…In many developing economies, the negative interaction between child labour and children's schooling has been established (Guarcello et al, 2015;Kluttz, 2015;ICI, 2019;UNICEF, 2020;Churchill et al, 2021;Bhattacharya et al, 2021;ILO and UNICEF, 2021). However, there is also a body of research that establishes that children can combine work and schooling without having harmful effects on their school attendance, retention and performance, and that it is possible for children to engage in work and use their income to support their schooling (No et al, 2012;Okyere, 2013;Rammohan, 2014;Meemken et al, 2017;Quattri and Watkins, 2019;Akoyi et al, 2020;Okyere et al, 2021). This study was planned to contribute additional evidence from rural and urban Ghana to the discussion on the interface between child labour and schooling and discover what policy interventions are needed to curb the problems associated with child labour.…”