Ministry Watch Report: Troubling ‘Rescues’ of West African Children by International Justice Mission

Image Source: IJM - Facebook

 By Kim Roberts - Posted at MinistryWatch:

Published July 18, 2023

A report by the Africa Eye section of the BBC claims to have discovered two documented cases where children were “traumatically and unjustly removed” from their homes and their relatives were wrongly prosecuted as child traffickers.

The cases have ties to work by International Justice Mission (IJM), a U.S.-based anti-human trafficking group that started in 1997 and claims to have “protected over 10.4 million vulnerable people from violence.”

The first case took place in a small village in northern Ghana in September 2022. According to the report, Ghanaian police officers sped into the village after midnight and forcibly removed four children and arrested two of the children’s uncles.

Known as Operation Hilltop, the raid was reportedly tied to IJM. Its model includes working with local law enforcement to rescue victims and bring perpetrators to justice.

The children were separated from their families for over four months and eventually reunited after the Ghanaian social services determined the children had not been trafficked.

Charges against the arrested uncles were also dropped and their names cleared.

According to the BBC account, IJM said its mission had “successfully relocated the four children with their fathers to a safer location.” However, an undercover reporter placed within IJM claimed that internal communications indicated IJM staff had concluded there were “no elements of trafficking” in the Operation Hilltop case.

Continue here.

See also:

• Anti-Sex Trafficking Organizations: Where Does the Money Go?  – MinistryWatch