Ghanaian children wrongly taken in raids backed by US charity IJM

A little after midnight on 6 September, 2022, Musah Mustafa emerged from his thatched-roof hut to relieve himself and saw four cars speeding towards his tiny village.

Mogyigna was barely a village. With just a handful of family homes and two dozen people in total, it was more like a dot in the middle of an expanse of farmland in northern Ghana. Cars were a rare sight during the day, let alone at night. Musah hid behind a tree and watched. When he saw armed men from the cars approach the two homes, he shouted in an attempt to wake the other residents.

But before anyone could act, the men entered the huts and forcibly removed four children, carrying an 11-year-old girl called Fatima by her arms and legs from the room where she had been sleeping with her grandparents.

A gun pointed at her neck, Fatima's grandmother Sana pleaded with the men. She did not understand why the children were being taken away. Two of the children's uncles were also taken. Sana feared she would never see her relatives again.

In the eyes of Mogyigna's villagers, a violent kidnapping had taken place.

But this was not a kidnapping.

Officially, it was a rescue operation carried out by Ghanaian police officers, under Ghana's Human Trafficking Act. The children were transferred into the care of social services.

The operation was instigated by IJM.