Is Ghana’s Law Against Human Trafficking a Success?

This article assessed the success or otherwise of the Ghana Human Trafficking Act (GHTA), 2005, in curbing human trafficking. On the basis of interviews and secondary information, the assessment was done along the program, process, and politics dimensions. The evidence showed that GHTA achieved fairly its program objectives. However, failures occurred in all the phases of the Act’s enactment process. In particular, agenda setting suffered from definitional ambiguity surrounding human trafficking and implementation was mired by resource constraints and financial impropriety. The findings also revealed that an integrated model of human trafficking has greater explanatory power than a single one, but there is inattention to this in extant literature. The article concludes that lessons should be drawn from the specific type as well as the overall program, process, and political failures of the Act. As in this case, an exclusive focus on technical learning to the neglect of potential process and political failures has increased rather than decreased the chances of policy failure. Moreover, the accent on legislative bans to the neglect of other interventions is futile.