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 thei