Children’s Harmful Work in Ghana’s Lake Volta Fisheries: Research Needed to Move Beyond Discourses of Child Trafficking

Abstract

Children work throughout the Lake Volta fisheries value chain. It is commonly assumed most have been trafficked. Research and advocacy has focused on dangers to young boys harvesting fish, and poverty as a driver, precluding attention to harms experienced by non-trafficked children, girls’ experiences and work-education dynamics. More work is needed on the proportions of children who fish and perform harmful work; structural, ecological and historical contexts; young people’s agency in pursuing fishing work; and why attention to trafficking dominates.