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The creation of a safe habitable society is of absolute relevance to the survival of children. And with the global 2030 agenda of building a society that leaves no one behind, it is important to work towards removing all forms of circumstantial factors that aggravate children’s vulnerability. To be able to effectively tackle the unaddressed issues of child vulnerabilities in Ghana, we need to ask ourselves some basic questions: Are our children really safe? Are their needs adequately met? Are their best interests’ paramount in every decision we make? Are they given the utmost support to grow in a peaceful and healthy environment?
Answers to these questions may vary greatly from one country to the other and from community to community. In Ghana, issues of protecting children from abuse and exploitation have not been adequately pursued despite existence of numerous legal frameworks to dealing with such menaces. Child labour for instance is a phenomenon that has persistently received very little attention regardless of its horrifying effects on children and society as a whole. Children by nature are deemed vulnerable due to their level of physical, emotional and intellectual abilities. However, in today’s society, poverty mixed with urbanisation and modernism place more children in perilous conditions as some children are left to their own fate to work and fend for themselves. Extreme poverty, broken homes, high fertility rates, high unemployment rates, streetism, and reduced economic support are some of the causal socioeconomic factors that conspire with modern life to ruin the lives of vulnerable children. Children in such situations are subjected to all forms of abuse and exploitation; ranging from physical, emotional, sexual to educational. The resulting effects of social changes caused by socioeconomic failures and urbanization have affected some families greatly, and by extension, the rights, living conditions and roles of children in the family.