Too Much Advocacy For Girls Disadvantageous To Boys –GJA Chairman

Caesar Abagali, N/R GJA Chairman

The Northern Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) Caesar Abagali has said that, the rate at which rights advocates were unrelentingly advocating for the education of the girl child was somehow also disadvantageous to the empowerment of the boy child.

He observed that, currently a lot of resources, time and attention were deliberately being devoted by government and most especially non-governmental organisations towards the empowerment of girls through education.

Mr. Abagali however, noted that, if care was not taken a time would come when those advocating for girls would have to start doing same for the boys because they were overemphasizing the importance of female education and relegating that of boys to the background. “I can tell you that, many boys are increasingly losing interest in school and dropping out to engage in menial jobs”, he stated. 

He continued “I’m one of those who always hold the view that, if you are a beautiful girl but an illiterate, you’ll get an educated man to marry when you grow up. But the same cannot be said about a boy who is handsome but an illiterate.”

Mr. Abagali who is also the Manager of the Northern Regional Bureau of the Ghana News Agency said this in Tamale at a sensitisation and training workshop on child labour organized by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in collaboration with the Northern Regional chapter of the GJA for journalists.

The overall purpose of the workshop was to contribute to the implementation of the National Plan of Action for the Elimination of Worst Forms of Child Labour (WFCL) in Ghana through enhanced media advocacy.

The objectives of the workshop was among other things to sensitise journalists on the concept of child labour: incidence, causes and consequences; an overview of existing programmes and projects in the context of the National Plan of Action on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour; and the international, national and legal frameworks governing interventions.

The ILO National Programme Manager for Ghana Kwame Mensah, said the media was a key outlet of information and education. Both traditional new media, he said, had become almost indispensable tools for information dissemination and social mobilisation. 

According to him, the Ghanaian media had not done badly on child labour reportage. However, much of its focus, he said, had been on mundane coverage of events and occasional sensational reporting on alleged child trafficking and abuse cases. 

Mr. Mensah also observed that, many media practitioners had no thorough understanding of child labour issues, adding “They have little grasp of the concept and the various types of child work; the factors involved in the definitions relating to the different forms of child labour as well as the incidence, scope and consequences of the problem.”

He stated that, generally, journalists were unaware of the international, national and local legal frameworks and intervention policies, programmes and projects existing to address the issue of child labour. “The knowledge gap of journalists in this regard hampers their ability to effectively promote efforts to combat child labour”, he pointed out.

Mr. Mensah disclosed that, in Ghana over one million children were involved in child labour particularly in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, child domestic servitude, kayayei, streetism and commercial sexual exploitation among others.

He charged journalists to take keen interest in child labour issues by learning about it so as to enable them educate the public very effectively on the rights of children and its effects on society.

Meanwhile, participants were trained on how to effectively report on child labour issues using the right terminology; developing an interest in child rights, child protection and child labour reporting and social mobilisation; and understanding and overcoming the challenges involved in child labour reporting.