NGO wants migrant child beggars repatriated or integrated

A child-centered civil society group, Child Rights International is calling on the government to repatriate all migrant kids begging on the streets of Accra if it cannot provide adequately for them.

Child Rights international, in the first of its monthly child streetism observation report, noted that 2 to 7 children are found on the streets of Accra daily, begging for alms within school instructional hours.

The report also noted that the numbers of child destitute on the street showed the broken state of Ghana’s child protection safety net.

Delivering the report, Executive Director of Child Rights International, Bright Appiah, said the state must collaborate with the various foreign missions in Ghana to repatriate foreign children to their home countries.

Mr. Appiah explained that the various sector ministries “must put their heads together to deal with this issue especially where it has to do with the foreigners.”

“It’s either they let them go back to their various countries where they come from by engaging with their embassies and their commissions in this country so that they allow them to go to their respectively countries to enjoy their freedom and the right that is enshrined.”

He also noted that because Ghana is enjoined to the UN convention on the right of children, which describes a child as a universal citizen, “if the state is not ready to let these children go back to their various countries, then we should start integration process where we would make those children beneficiaries of our social protection system.”

“So that any services that this available for any child, be it Ghanaian, or non-Ghanaian, we would also provide such services for them because the street is not where they belong.

So if we cannot do that the alternative solution that we are giving to it is that ones we have rectified the UN convention of the right of the child, that universality that we’ve given to who a child is must also apply in this context so that at least we see how best we can also provide services for them. And the rate at which they give birth must be something that the state must be interested in,” he added.