By Rebecca Ekpe
”Accelerating TOGETHER Action Against Child Labour in Ghana” is a new project that has been launched in Accra, Ghana by a cohort of development partners to combat Child Labour.
It is being convened as a Multi-Stakeholder and Multi-Sectoral initiative that will be implemented in partnership with the Government of Ghana, the International Cocoa Initiative(ICI), International Labour Organization(ILO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Japan International Cooperation Agency(JICA), and the World Bank(WB).
The launch in Accra of ”Accelerating TOGETHER Action Against Child Labour in Ghana”, is envisaged as evidence of strong partnerships among development partners and donors supporting the Governmnet of Ghana to implement the Ghana Accelerated Action Plan Against Child Labour 2023-2027.
ICI and Partners:
The New Ghana Accelerated Action Plan Against Child Labour 2023-2027(GAPAACL), recognizes Public-Private Partnership(PPP), as integral to addressing Child Labour. Under the UNICEF/ICI supported project on Child labour, the PPP is realized through a technical collaboration between UNICEF and ICI, with funding from the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs(SECO), UNICEF, ICI and private sector collaborators. The partners seek to address the issue of child labour jointly recognizing the nexus between child labour,poverty, lack of quality education,access to social issues lackof opportunities for youth as well as the lack of capacities and cordination between the stakeholders in child labour.
ICI Country Director Mike Arthur proscribes information and knowlege sharing as well as a collaborative tracking mechanism to ensure more traction in acceleration actions against Child labour in Ghana.
” We recognize the importance of having systematic approaches to address the nexus between child labour, poverty, education and youth skilling and employability”.
”It is important to caution that everything we are doing is still at the level of theory and that unless there is a strong coordination and effective monitoring systems in place to track progress and facilitate knowledge sharing and learning. Let us be transparent as individual organizations to share needed nuances to ensure success”, Mr. Arthur noted at the project launch at the Kempinski Gold Coast Hotel in Accra.
Mr. Arthur who joined International Cocoa Initiative in 2017 as the Country Director, stated that ICI’s focus has been to work with ”our members on community development initiatives and also child labour monitoring and remediation systems in cocoa supply chain”.
He said ICI has already in 2022 started working in 4 districts to foster more functional cooperation between -industries, CSOs, and government services.
Furthermore under the ”Accelerating TOGETHER Action Against Child Labour in Ghana”, with UNICEF, ICI will leverage their past experience to ensure that, joint actions could be identified and that there will be proper coordination of all such joint and individuals actions.
ICI Review Actions:
ICI has initiated the review and collaborated with the government and other institutions on the Ghana Child Labour monitoring and evaluation system, the hazardous activities framework, carried out training of journalists and of the government institutions on the basic concepts of child labour.
”We are currently supporting the government in developing a monitoring and evaluation system to track progress and effective reporting of child labour activities in the country”, according to ICI Country Director Mr. Arthur.
