Committee on the Rights of the Child

List of issues in relation to the combined sixth and seventh periodic reports of Ghana *

The State party is requested to submit in writing additional, updated information, of 10,700 words maximum, by 15 June 2025. The Committee may take up all aspects of children’s rights set out in the Convention during the dialogue with the State party.

Part I

Please describe the measures taken or envisaged:

(a)To bring all its legislation into conformity with the Convention and to ensure the effective implementation of child-related legislation;

(b)To develop a comprehensive policy and strategy addressing children’s issues, including the provision of sufficient human, technical and financial resources, and ensure the effective implementation of the existing policies;

(c)To ensure coordination and cooperation among government institutions to implement the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto at the national, regional and community levels;

(d)To earmark sufficient, targeted budgetary resources for the implementation of children’s rights, particularly in the areas of health, education and the protection of children in vulnerable situations;

(e)To establish a comprehensive data-collection system that disaggregates data by age, sex, disability, national origin, ethnic origin, migration status and other categories and covers all areas under the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto;

(f)To provide the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice, particularly its Women and Children’s Unit, with sufficient human, technical and financial resources to ensure its functional autonomy;

(g)To ensure pathways for access to justice and remedies for children, including administrative complaint mechanisms and child-friendly judicial procedures.

Please provide information on the measures taken to ensure that business activities ensure respect for children’s rights and environmental and other standards and to investigate any negative impact of their activities on children, including by the agricultural, mining and fishing industries.

Please explain the measures taken to adopt a comprehensive strategy to eliminate de facto discrimination, including against girls, children with disabilities, children with albinism, migrant, asylum-seeking and refugee children, children living in rural areas and children in street situations.

Please describe the measures taken:

(a)To ensure that all children born in the State party are registered and issued free birth certificates, including children in rural areas and asylum-seeking and refugee children;

(b)To provide children with access to information from a variety of sources, including online sources, while protecting them from content that is harmful to their well-being and guaranteeing their right to privacy.

Please describe the measures taken:

(a)To ensure the establishment of child protection infrastructure and social, health and judicial interventions in cases of child abuse and neglect, including for the recovery of child victims;

(b)To combat the sexual exploitation and abuse of children by implementing the relevant legislation and ensuring that child victims are not stigmatized and that such crimes and the punishment of perpetrators are reported and investigated;

(c)To combat the practice of corporal punishment of children, especially in the family and in school;

(d)To eliminate child marriage;

(e)To eradicate the harmful practice of cross-border female genital mutilation and ensure that cases of female genital mutilation are promptly investigated and prosecuted;

(f)To prevent and eliminate the practice of trokosi (ritual servitude) and to ensure the release and reintegration of children subjected to that practice.

Please provide information on measures taken or envisaged:

(a)To develop any further programme aimed at supporting children to grow up in a family environment and to strengthen social protection services to provide support and assistance to keep families together;

(b)To decrease the levels of institutionalization of children due to socioeconomic pressures and to expand the coverage of the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty programme;

(c)To ensure the independent monitoring of alternative care settings in a regular and systematic manner;

(d)To ensure the periodic review of the placement of children in foster care and institutions and to monitor the quality of care therein through the Department of Social Welfare, including by providing accessible channels for reporting, monitoring and remedying the maltreatment of children;

(e)To guarantee the implementation of the Children’s (Amendment) Bill 2016, amending the Children’s Act 1998 (Act 560), and to better regulate and monitor child adoption in the State party.

Please describe the measures taken or envisaged to adopt a human rights-based approach to disability and to prevent the institutionalization of children with disabilities in so-called prayer camps and psychiatric institutions.

Please provide information on the measures taken or envisaged:

(a)To reduce neonatal and under-5 mortality by providing equitable access to healthcare for women during pregnancy and delivery, including prenatal care and services for the prevention of communicable diseases, to encourage exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life and an appropriate infant diet thereafter and to renew the National Newborn Strategy and Action Plan (2019–2023);

(b)To ensure access for adolescents to age-appropriate reproductive health information and services, including free and safe abortion and post-abortion services and free access to contraceptives, including in remote and rural areas;

(c)To ensure comprehensive education on sexual and reproductive health and rights, including by providing, as part of the mandatory school curricula and in teacher training, information on the prevention of early pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections;

(d)To prevent the mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS and to improve the access to and the coverage of antiretroviral therapy for HIV-infected children, mothers and pregnant women and the provision of prophylaxis, particularly to adolescents;

(e)To address the incidence of alcohol, tobacco and drug abuse, including the abuse of prescription opioids by children.

Please update the Committee on the measures taken to address the limited access of children to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, particularly in rural areas, and to establish poverty reduction strategies and programmes at all levels.

Please provide information on the measures taken to ensure that national policies and programmes addressing environmental protection and climate change take into account children’s needs and views and to promote children’s awareness of and preparedness for climate change.

Please describe the measures taken:

(a)To guarantee free primary education and the enrolment of all children in primary and secondary education, including efforts to implement the Free Senior High School programme;

(b)To ensure the effective and efficient regulation and monitoring of private education providers;

(c)To provide children with disabilities with inclusive education in mainstream schools by ensuring reasonable accommodation and sufficient support, including accessible school buildings and facilities and accessible school materials and equipment;

(d)To improve the quality of education, including by improving facilities, infrastructure and teacher training and establishing strict qualification requirements for those working as teachers.

Please update the Committee on efforts made:

(a)To ensure that asylum-seeking and refugee children are provided with sufficient protection and the necessary assistance, including legal aid, at all stages of the asylum and refugee determination procedure and that guardians are appointed for unaccompanied and separated asylum-seeking and refugee children;

(b)To reduce the prevalence of child labour in the State party, particularly in fisheries, mining, quarrying and agriculture, prayer camps, the trokosi system, commercial sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, the portering of heavy loads and street begging;

(c)To address the high prevalence of the sexual exploitation of children, particularly commercial sexual exploitation;

(d)To compile information and develop public policies to ensure special protection for children in street situations;

(e)To enact and implement legislation to address trafficking in children, to investigate and prosecute trafficking offences and to improve data collection efforts to ensure reliable data on trafficking in children.

Please provide information on the measures taken to implement the Committee’s previous recommendationsto adopt the justice for children policy, establish specialized child justice court facilities, ensure that the deprivation of liberty is used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible amount of time and ensure that children are not detained together with adults.

Part II

The Committee invites the State party to provide a brief update, of no more than three pages, on the information set out in its report with regard to the following:

(a)New bills or laws, and their respective regulations;

(b)New institutions and their mandates or institutional reforms;

(c)Recently introduced policies, programmes and action plans and their scope and financing;

(d)Recent ratifications of human rights instruments.

Part III

Data, statistics and other information

Please provide consolidated information for the past three years on the budget lines regarding children and the social sectors, indicating the percentage of each budget line in terms of the total national budget and the gross national product. Please also provide information on the geographical allocation of those resources.

Please provide updated statistical data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, ethnic origin, national origin, geographical location and socioeconomic status, on the following:

(a)Cases of abuse and violence perpetrated against children, including torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, all forms of corporal punishment, sexual abuse in and outside of the home, domestic violence, bullying and online sexual violence and abuse, and on prosecutions and sentences handed down in the State party in such cases;

(b)Cases of child marriage;

(c)Cases of adolescent pregnancy;

(d)Stateless children;

(e)Asylum-seeking, refugee, unaccompanied and migrant children;

(f)Working children, including in the informal sector;

(g)Children in street situations;

(h)Children living in poverty;

(i)Children who are victims of trafficking in persons.

Please provide updated statistical data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, ethnic origin, national origin, geographical location and socioeconomic status, on the situation of children deprived of a family environment who are or who have been:

(a)Separated from their families, including the duration of the separation;

(b)Placed in institutions, including the number of institutions and the number of children in each institution;

(c)Placed with foster families;

(d)Available for adoption;

(e)Adopted domestically and through intercountry adoptions, if any, including data on the receiving countries.

Please provide data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, type of disability, ethnic origin and geographical location, on the number of children with disabilities who are or who have been:

(a)Living with their families;

(b)Living in institutions;

(c)Attending regular primary schools;

(d)Attending regular secondary schools;

(e)Attending special schools;

(f)Out of school;

(g)Abandoned by their families.

Please provide updated statistical data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, type of offence, ethnic origin, national origin, geographical location and socioeconomic status, on children alleged as, accused of or recognized as having infringed criminal law who have been:

(a)Arrested;

(b)Referred to diversion programmes;

(c)Held in pretrial detention;

(d)Convicted and serving a sentence in detention, including information on the length of the sentence.

Please provide information on how a children’s rights-based approach is integrated into the planning, implementation and monitoring of measures for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, including with regard to the participation of children and data collection, and on how those measures promote the realization of children’s rights under the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto.

Please provide the Committee with an update of any data in the report that may have become outdated by more recent data collected or other new developments.

In addition, the State party may list areas affecting children that it considers to be of priority with regard to the implementation of the Convention.