Children and adults from Northern Region who migrate to southern Ghana in search of a living usually take up work as “Kayayeis” or porters. Courtesy: Albert Oppong-Ansah

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
ACCRA, Dec 13 2013 (IPS)

It was 20-year-old Fizer Boa who first migrated south to Ghana’s capital, Accra, to work in the local Abobloshie market as a porter or “Kayayei”.

“I agreed with my mother when she advised me to go join my friend who was working as a Kayayei in Accra. I did not object to the idea because … we hardly had three square meals a day,” she told IPS. Reduced rainfall in the Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo district in Ghana’s Northern Region, where Boa comes from, has resulted in low yields for the past two years, leaving her family barely able to survive.

In the city, Boa’s job involves carrying loads of goods on her head or back from one place to another for fees as low as 50 cents or as high as six dollars.

Soon after she came here, her two sisters dropped out of school and left their home to follow her and also work as Kayayeis."It is evident ... that land scarcity and soil infertility are one of the main elements pushing people off the land to seek a safe-haven in the south.” -- research scientist Dr. Wilson Dogbe

“My other siblings dropped out of school to join me in Accra because my mother could no longer pay for additional school levies, such as Parent Teachers Association fees, and school materials,” Boa said. Schooling is usually free in this West African nation, though each school charges its own additional costs and administration fees.

Combined, the sisters earn up to 30 dollars on a good day.

Kayayei is a trade often taken up by children and adults from the Northern Region who migrate to southern Ghana in search of a living. And according to Dr. Wilson Dogbe, a research scientist at the Savannah Agriculture Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, one of the major causes of this migration is the changing environment in the north.

The Northern Region is a predominantly rural-based community, and farmers there have become vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

“The problem is that the Northern Region currently is experiencing low rainfall, soil infertility, and increased temperatures as high as 47 degrees Celsius. It is evident from research conducted over the past few years that land scarcity and soil infertility are one of the main elements pushing people off the land to seek a safe-haven in the south,” he said.

The Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre (NORSAAC), an NGO based in the Northern Region’s capital Tamale, estimates the number of Kayayei in Accra and Kumasi, a city in southern Ghana, is over 80,000.

Some of these climate refugees, who are mostly young girls between the ages of 18 and 30 sent by their families to earn an income, fetch water for people, work in chop-bars (local restaurants), and as hawkers and shop attendants.

But their existence is a precarious one. Mohammed Awal, NORSAAC’s director, told IPS that the young girls were the most vulnerable of these climate refugees as they had no place to live and mostly slept in open-air truck stops at the mercy of the weather and other threats. 

“A lot of these migrants, especially girls, return home to their families with sexually transmitted diseases,” he said, adding that many of the young women who fell pregnant were unable to trace the fathers, or experienced problems with illegal abortions.

Boa said she sometimes faced “life-threating situations like sexual harassment from men” and said she too was forced to sleep in open-air truck stops.

Dogbe said the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), established in 2010 by the government to alleviate poverty in Ghana’s north and address the north-south youth migration, had not done much to reduce migration.

“It was supposed to provide opportunities for poor peasants, especially women, to own assets … sustain their food crop production and protect the fragile eco-system of the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone. But much has not been done,” he said.

He said that 80 percent of the roads in Northern Region remained impassable and farmers still did not have the necessary machines like tractors and harvesters to make their jobs easier. He added that farmers also needed soft loans to be able to purchase the right inputs and seeds.

However, Ghana’s deputy minister of food and agriculture Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan told IPS that SADA and the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project would ensure the region once again became Ghana’s breadbasket.

The World Bank and the U.S Agency for International Development have funded the agricultural project to the tune of 145 million dollars to develop infrastructure, such as roads and irrigation schemes, in order to improve agriculture productivity in the Accra Plains and the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone.

But until this happens Boa and her sisters will keep trying to find ways to earn a living far from home.

“Hopefully, we will work hard to save money and send some to our parents,” she said. But she and her sisters dream of having a better life and being more than just porters. They hope to be able to enroll in vocational training “such as fashion design, hair dressing to be able to earn a decent as well as sustainable income.”

Mu Kyi, a migrant worker in Thailand, fears for the future of her children. Credit: Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
BANGKOK, May 7 2013 (IPS)

In the hustle and bustle of Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, a small learning centre located in the Bang Bon district is helping children hailing mostly from the war-torn provinces of Myanmar (Burma) gain access to a basic education.

Established by the Foundation for Rural Youth (FRY), the learning centre is one of the few that offer Thai language lessons to migrant youth, and prepare children for entrance into Thai schools, by “introducing them to Thai culture”, Pao Hom, an organiser with FRY, told IPS.

Most other learning centres for migrants lack methodologies specifically targeted at early childhood development, and few are recognised by the Thai Ministry of Education.

Although teachers that come through FRY are “trained in early childhood development under the supervision of the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security,” according to Hom, many of the teachers do not have formal educational qualifications.

Hom says migrants who come here to avail themselves of low-paying jobs in Thailand’s many garment, textile and furniture factories struggle to educate their children. Immigrant communities and neighbourhoods are some of the “worst environments for learning,” she said.

Dr. Panadda Thanasetkorn, a professor at Mahidol University’s National Institute for Child and Family Development, told IPS that without professional training for teachers and a better formal education system, migrant children will remain trapped in the cycle of poverty and unemployment that plagues these border zones.

Located in the heart of Southeast Asia, Thailand has long been the final destination for massive human migrations, as hungry, unemployed or war-weary residents from neighbouring countries flock to its industrial border towns and bustling urban centres.

Recent statistics from the Labour Ministry estimate that there are nearly 2.5 million migrant workers from Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar and Cambodia in Thailand – nearly half of whom are undocumented.

In addition, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said there are some 84,900 registered refugees and an estimated 62,000 unregistered asylum-seekers in nine camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.

At least 10 percent of this population are estimated to be children. A 2011 report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) suggests that there were approximately 377,000 children from neighbouring countries residing in Thailand.

Lacking social protections and legal status, migrant children represent one of the most disadvantaged groups when it comes to early childhood development, a critical period that the World Bank defines as occurring between birth and eight years of age, during which a child’s rapid brain growth forms the basis of their future physical, emotional and cognitive development.

Although migrant children are eligible to attend state schools in Thailand, a number of barriers prevent them from fully accessing their right to education.

According to Thanasetkorn, “Most parents of migrant children do not speak Thai, are without legal documents and fear discrimination, which prevents them from approaching public social services (such as education, health care and the justice system).”

She said children who fall in the “low-income” bracket – meaning from families who earn between five and 10 dollars a day – often sacrifice going to school in order to work and support their families. The shrimp industry, fisheries, sugar cane plantations and garment factories have all come under scrutiny after a 2012 PBS documentary exposed widespread use of child migrants in these sectors.

According to Thanasetkorn, preventing child labour requires early intervention in the form of education, to equip children with the skills they need to “improve their quality of life”.

In 2005, under the Education for All (EFA) policy, the Thai government extended the right to education for all children in Thailand regardless of their legal status.

However, a recent report by VSO International Thailand/Myanmar suggests that less than 20 percent of registered migrant children attend Thai schools. This estimate is likely to be lower for early childhood development.

In comparison, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) suggests that the national gross enrolment rate for lower secondary education was over 90 percent and for upper secondary education it was about 60 percent in 2010.

VSO International Researcher Hattaya Wongsaengpaiboon says there is a major disconnect between policies that seem to exist solely on paper, and practical barriers to accessing educational facilities.

“Thai policy clearly states that anyone, regardless of legal status, can attend Thai schools but in reality very few do,” Wongsaengpaiboon said. “Many of the Thai schools we approached would request a birth certificate or a letter of recommendation from either a Thai person or a local organisation” before agreeing to enroll a student.

Given that only a third of the migrant children born in Thailand have birth certificates, the stringent admission rules lead to questions “about child protection and the right of every child to have an identity,” she stressed.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), nearly five percent of all births – or roughly 40,000 children – go unregistered in Thailand every year, most amongst vulnerable groups including migrant children and those from ethnic minorities.

Thailand has taken some steps towards confronting this issue, particularly with tools like the 2010 Civil Registration Act, which grants all children born in the country the right to birth registration regardless of status.

This also aids migrant children in accessing the educational system, health care and better employment opportunities in the future.

But here again, activists and advocates have found that while such policies look good on paper, things are not nearly so rosy on the ground.

“What we discovered in our research was that families were not always informed by the hospital staff that they had the right to provide their children with birth certificates,” said Wongsaengpaiboon.

Migrant learning centres like the one in Bangkok have been taking the first steps towards bridging this gap. According to Hom, civil society “partnerships with government-run schools break any barriers to migrant children receiving a Thai education. By taking this route, children are far more likely to enter the university system and break the cycle of poverty.”

However, unlike FRY, which receives generous funding from major donors like USAID, Save the Children and the European Union, many informal institutions that are not recognised by the Thai government and receive little to no funding are unable to provide services like the state’s free lunch programme, forcing many migrant children to attend school without proper nutrition.