Children from the Volta Lake in Ghana, 2020

Portraits of children rescued from their masters by PACODEP, Ghanaian NGO's which work with child victims of human trafficking, supporting them with accommodation and education. In their shelter they are care about hundred children with traumas after many years of work for free for fisherman's, away from their families.
Lake Volta in Ghana, is home to thousands of child slaves. Children as young as five years old are sold to human traffickers. Fisherman paying very little money (cost of a cow) to traffickers and then turn children into slaves. They are beaten and abused, most of them eating once a day only, and working 7 days a week for 10-12 hours from very early in the morning.
Sometimes, parents are unable to provide for their children and in an effort to provide them with a better future, parents send their children to live with extended family relations or place them in the care of adults in nearby communities to learn a trade for a small amount of money.
Unfortunately for many of the children who live in and around agricultural hubs like the Volta Lake they often end up as victims of child labor.