GHANA POLICE TAKES ACTION TO PROVIDE CHILD-FRIENDLY POLICING!

Let’s take a journey into your childhood. How well do you know and relate to the Police? Are they our friends as described in the books, or monsters that put people behind bars for reasons best known to them? I bet the latter would resonate with you like many children in Ghana if you lived in their communities. Recently, the police have been the leading name in Bribery and Corruption in Ghana backed by their public display of skimpy demands from somewhat ignorant road users equally in the corruption soup. As the Ghanaian adage implies; there is a black sheep in every home. However, we must recognize the good ones who keep the integrity of the profession.

In typical Ghanaian communities, children fear the police and would rather maintain a distance from them than to report cases or observations made in the community. This, I would say, is no fault of theirs at all. The perception children develop about the police is not only caused by the fear instilled in them by factors in their communities but the police themselves. Policing in Ghana for some time was tailored to meet the needs of the adult forgetting the needs of the most vulnerable in the community—CHILDREN! 

As I would love to assume that all children have a happy childhood and are granted all the basic necessities of life enshrined in the United Nations’ Convention on The Right of the Child and Ghana’s Children’s Act 560 and other documents, the reality strongly contradicts. Many are those who lack protection, many more are deprived of their rights to participate in issues that affect their development, the survival of the lot are left to the destiny of the clock which ticks for the fittest and the development of most of them remain doomed.

In light of this, many cases on domestic violence, child trafficking, child labor, sexual abuse, assaults, threats, and other sensitive issues of child prostitution, illegal abortion and others do not reach the police. The police are aware of this and, therefore have partnered with the United Nations’ Children’s Fund-UNICEF and the International Bureau of Children’s rights to integrate child friendliness in effective policing. This was launched at the Public Affairs Department of the Ghana Police headquarters in Accra on 12^th March 2015 and was and attended by the Minister of Interior, Deputy minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, UNICEF Ghana Country Representative--Mrs. Susan Ngongi, The International Bureau of Children’s Rights, Civil society groups including  children from Curious Minds Ghana. 

This initiative aims to build capacities of the police to adapt more to children’s environment to assist in solving problems with any child who comes into contact with the law; be it a witness, victim or offender of the law. The initiative is to be integrated into the police training curricula in all police training institutions in Ghana. This will enhance other departments in the Ghana Police service to comprehensively provide social justice for children who come into contact with the law.