Challenging Heights calls for dedicated trafficking courts after 33 girls rescued from sexual exploitation

Challenging Heights has called for dedicated human trafficking courts and specialised investigative capacity after a weekend operation led by the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Ghana Police Service rescued 33 girls from trafficking and sexual exploitation.

Challenging Heights also called for increased personnel and resourcing for the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit, the Ghana Immigration Service and specialised prosecution teams; for investigators to be equipped with sophisticated tools including financial investigation and asset tracing, digital forensics, analysis of online recruitment, and intelligence sharing with Nigerian counterparts; and for trauma-informed, specialised investigative and prosecutorial training to be institutionalised, with official complicity prosecuted wherever it is found.

Challenging Heights described the operation as a "commercial operation with pricing, quotas, supervision and enforcement," running on a chain of specialised roles: recruiters working in communities and increasingly online; transporters; immigration officials the organisation has reason to believe are compromised; madams who travel with the girls from Nigeria into Ghana; and senior madams who supervise those madams.