THE CULTURE OF SILENCE AND DOMESTIC SERVITUDE: THE PARADIGM SHIFT GHANA NEEDS

By Pauleson Utsu | For Noble News

KUMASI , “There is silence that heals, and there is silence that kills.”

That line frames a difficult conversation Ghana can no longer postpone. For generations, many of us grew up hearing a familiar phrase, often said with love, sometimes as a warning: _“You are being trained.”_

A child sent to live with an aunt, an uncle, or a family friend. Not abandoned, but “placed,” so the story goes, to learn discipline, to learn how to run a home, to become useful. It is a historical background that shaped millions of childhoods across Ghana.

But at Safe Child Advocacy [SCA], we have been forced to sit with an uncomfortable truth: for far too many children, “training” has quietly become something else entirely.

It is the child who wakes before everyone else and sleeps after everyone else. The child who is called “family” but never treated as one. The child who has learned early, and has learned well, never to complain.

That silence is the part that stays with them the most.

When Resilience Masks Harm

A recent study on child house-helps in Ghana found something both moving and unsettling: many of these children cope not by speaking up, but by praying, by quietly seeking comfort from a kind neighbour, by simply enduring.

It is resilience, yes. But it is also a child learning, day by day, that their voice does not matter, that silence is safer than speaking.

And once a child believes that, we have already lost the first and most important line of protection: their willingness to tell someone.

This is not an isolated problem tucked away in a corner of the country.

According to national reporting on trafficking in persons, identified trafficking victims in Ghana rose from 574 in 2022 to 944 in 2023, with more than half of them being children.

Many of these cases begin exactly the way “training” once did: a child sent to live with someone else, sometimes with a relative’s knowledge, and slowly, quietly exploited under a roof that was supposed to be safe.

What is often labelled as domestic help, when it involves a child in excessive, unpaid labour, isolation, and denial of education and rest, meets the threshold of domestic servitude, a form of human trafficking.

Beyond Laws to Everyday Courage

Ghana has laws. The Human Trafficking Act, 2005 (Act 694) as amended, carries real penalties, including imprisonment of not less than five years for trafficking offences. The Children’s Act also provides clear protections.

But laws alone do not reach a child who has already learned not to speak.

The real work happens in homes, in churches and mosques, in classrooms, in lorry stations and marketplaces, and in the everyday conversations we have with the children around us.

It happens when we teach a child, gently and clearly, that “no” is allowed; that telling a trusted adult when something feels wrong is not disrespect, rather it is bravery.

This is the paradigm shift Safe Child Advocacy is committed to leading: not just changing laws, but changing what we normalize.

Not just asking children to behave, but asking them how they are really doing, and believing them when they answer.

Silence has protected exploitation for too long. It is time we made room for children’s voices instead.

Breaking the culture of silence requires collective responsibility. Parents must interrogate who they entrust their children to. Host families must remember that care is not a transaction.

Community leaders, teachers, and faith leaders must create safe reporting channels. And the state, through the Department of Social Welfare and law enforcement, must be resourced to respond swiftly when a child does speak.

If you see a child in domestic servitude, isolated, overworked, out of school, or afraid to speak, say something. Call the Department of Social Welfare or report to the nearest police station.

A child’s silence should never be mistaken for consent. Their safety depends on our willingness to listen.