In an effort to promote fair labor practices and end forced labor in Ghana’s marine fishing sector, the International Labor Organization has trained more than 20 journalists.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 8 target 8.7, which calls on countries to take immediate action against decent work deficits that are an affront to the fundamental principles and rights at work, was the focus of the two-day workshop held in Accra in collaboration with the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC).
Under this, the workshop highlighted the elements of indecent work termed as the Unholy Quartet; forced labour, child labour, human trafficking and modern slavery, and the need for these to be eradicated in line with the UN’s target of promoting decent work globally by 2025.
The initial focus however was on the marine fisheries sector as an entry point to tackling forced labour in Ghana.
Speaking on the importance of the workshop to the fight against forced labour in the sector, the National Project Officer of International Labour Office (ILO), Emmanuel Kwame Mensah, said that there is very little attention focused on the working conditions of people in the marine fisheries sector.
Emmanuel Kwame Mensah addressing journalists
According to him, despite being one of the most important sectors that contributes to every economy, the working conditions of people in the area is often hazardous.
“Forced labour among adults, particularly in the marine fisheries sector is not only a problem for Ghana. Across the world, even though there is illegal unreported and unregulated fishing that governments are interested in, labour and decent work issues, with workers on fishing vessels is not looked at very well.
“There’s no attention to it across the world so the ILO is asserting itself to support countries to look there, because we consider that one of the most harzadous occupations. The marine environment is not an ordinary environment, we are not amphibians, we are human beings so when a human being is on water, it is an unnatural environment and we make sure that we have to give attention to it,” he said in an interview with GhanaWeb.
Journalists were further urged to push relevant stakeholders for the ratification of the ILO Conventions including C188 – Work in Fishing Convention (2007) and the Private Employment Agencies Convention, 1997 (No. 181).
This follows the launch of the ILO Report on Forced Labour and Forced marriage on September 12, 2022.
Forced labour, as set out in the ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No.29),1 refers to “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”
The ILO indicates that an estimated 27.6 million people are in forced labour, with 17.3 million of these persons in the private sector, 6.3million in forced commercial sexual exploitation and 3.9 million in forced labour imposed by state.
The report is expected to enable government and other authorities within the fisheries sector to facilitate measures to reduce the exploitation of fishers both on private and commercial work.