Children’s Work in Ghana: Policies and Politics

This chapter explores policy and legislation aimed at preventing, regulating and abolishing harmful children’s work in Ghana. The government aligns itself with mainstream development partners and the UN in viewing harmful children’s work as a breach of dignity, wellbeing and fundamental human rights. Campaigns, laws and policies have been put in place to stop such work, yet the number of children involved in prohibited work and those combining such work with schooling continues to rise. The chapter identifies the incompatibility of these policies and programmes with the country’s historical, socio-cultural, economic and political realities. It concludes that legislation and interventions aimed at preventing children’s hazardous or harmful work should draw on both the formal legislative rights and the informal, traditional rights discourses if they are to help advance children’s development, rights and best interests.