11 June 2007
U.S. Lauds Ghanaian Official's Efforts Against Human Trafficking
Policewoman Patience Quaye pursues child abductor to Nigeria
Washington -- The extraordinary efforts of Deputy Police Superintendent Patience Quaye, who doggedly pursued and helped prosecute a man who abducted and sold his 9-year-old stepson to strangers in Nigeria, enforced a new law in Ghana to combat human trafficking.
The 30-year police veteran is being honored by the U.S. State Department for her efforts in returning the child to his mother and helping to prosecute the abductor, who was sentenced to six years in prison.
Quaye was named one of eight "Heroes Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery" in conjunction with the June 2007 release of the department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report.
Speaking June 5 by phone from Accra, Ghana, Quaye told USINFO she was "most grateful" for the U.S. recognition. The investigation and prosecution of the offender was "a big achievement for our human trafficking law, passed by Parliament in 2005," she said.
Following a complaint from a woman that her husband had disappeared with her son from a previous marriage, Quaye said the Ghanaian authorities got a tip that the two were in Lagos, Nigeria. "When I traveled to Nigeria I discovered he had attempted to sell the child unsuccessfully and then moved on to Abuja," Nigeria's capital, she said.
In Abuja, 600 kilometers from Lagos, the stepfather was able to sell the boy, but people became suspicious and reported him to the police, who arrested him, Quaye explained.
After a round of "very cooperative" meetings with Nigerian authorities, Quaye said, the man was extradited to Ghana, where he was tried and found guilty of human trafficking -- the first successful prosecution under the 2005 law.
A U.S. Embassy official said Quaye's efforts were "viewed very highly by the State Department" because "at this point, even though the law was passed, its mandate for setting up a human trafficking board -- regulating how prosecutions are to be handled -- had not been implemented."
Quaye's efforts to navigate the legal bureaucracy, leading to a successful prosecution, were "above and beyond the call of duty" and represent the best in law enforcement in Ghana, the U.S. official added.
Since 2005 the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided more than $2.2 million for programs in eight African countries to fight human trafficking.
The 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report is scheduled to be released on June 12.
For additional information, see 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report.
