TIP 2026: Ghana Upgraded to Tier 1 - What the Trafficking in Persons Report Says and What It Misses
The US State Department’s 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report, published on 8 October, has moved Ghana up to Tier 1. In the report’s words, the government “fully meets the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.” Nigeria, our other priority country, remains on Tier 2. The upgrade is earned. It also says less about the young people most at risk than the headline suggests.
TIP 2026 for Ghana in brief
- Tier 1, up from Tier 2 in the 2025 report.
- 2,331 trafficking victims identified in 2025, up from 794 in 2024. 1,469 were foreign nationals, 896 of them Nigerian.
- 212 alleged traffickers prosecuted (65 in 2024) and 28 convicted (25 in 2024). Investigations fell from 273 to 222.
- Still unresolved: no fraudulent labour recruiter held liable, recruitment fees paid by workers still legal, too little shelter, and officials without the tools to investigate cyber-trafficking.
Why Ghana was upgraded
The report credits five things: more prosecutions and convictions, more victims identified and referred to services, stronger action against online scam operations, more money for anti-trafficking work, and extensive training for front-line officials. The government also signed labour agreements with Qatar and Grenada to protect Ghanaian workers abroad, and an agreement with QNET to identify and dismantle online scam operations linked to fraudulent recruitment.
Money moved too. The government allocated 3,452,000 cedis for direct victim services in 2025, up from 2,850,000 cedis spent in 2024, and 2,203,300 cedis for prevention. Eighteen courts now have specialised procedures and trauma-informed facilities for cases involving women and children. The marine police patrol Lake Volta for child labour and trafficking.
These are real gains, and the people who delivered them deserve the credit.
Read the numbers carefully
The headline figure is the rise in victims identified, from 794 to 2,331. Most of that rise is foreign nationals. Of the 2,331, 1,469 came from other countries, and the report says joint operations with INTERPOL and foreign governments, including against online scam operations, identified and repatriated 756 foreign victims. Nigerian victims alone rose from 358 to 896.
Ghanaian victims rose too, from 301 to 862, and the government funded the return of 567 Ghanaians exploited abroad. It also screened 2,837 returning migrants for signs of trafficking. That screening is exactly what the 2025 report asked for.
Prosecutions more than tripled, but 124 of the 212 were for “unspecified forms of trafficking”, and the report notes that some suspects were prosecuted under other laws when there was not enough evidence for a trafficking conviction. Convictions rose by three, from 25 to 28, split evenly between sexual exploitation and forced labour. Investigations fell. No government employee was investigated, prosecuted or convicted for complicity.
None of this undoes the upgrade. It does mean Tier 1 rests mainly on identifying and prosecuting more cases, much of it cross-border and online, rather than on any measured fall in trafficking.
TIP 2025’s recommendations: what changed
The 2025 report set Ghana four priorities. This year’s report dropped recommendations for every country, not just Ghana, and gives no reason. The State Department’s own call for evidence in January still said each country chapter would include them. Freedom United reports that the team writing the report was cut from 31 to 9 people in 2025. Whatever the cause, governments now get a grade without being told what to fix, so we have used last year’s recommendations as the test.
- Screen vulnerable people for trafficking and refer victims. Progress: 2,837 returning migrants screened, standard procedures in use, all identified victims referred.
- Prosecute labour trafficking and fraudulent recruitment, with prison terms. Partly met: more prosecutions, most convicted traffickers sentenced to at least a year. But the report says again that the government “did not report holding labor recruiters civilly and criminally liable for fraudulent recruitment”.
- Protect workers abroad and stop workers paying recruitment fees. Partly met: new agreements with Qatar and Grenada, pre-departure training. Recruitment fees paid by workers are still legal; the government only “discouraged” them.
- More and better care for victims. Partly met: more funding and three shelters for children. The shelter for adult women was inoperable during the year, and police officers sometimes paid for victims’ temporary care out of their own pockets.
One issue from earlier reports has dropped out of sight. The 2015 regulations still allow a parent or guardian who traffics a child to receive a fine instead of prison. The 2024 report asked Ghana to remove that option. The 2026 chapter does not mention it.
The Gulf: the ban still is not working
Ghana’s 2017 ban on labour migration to the Gulf states stays in place. The report states plainly that “the number of Ghanaians exploited in the Gulf continued to increase.” The new agreement with Qatar is a step towards regulated migration. But as the 2024 report noted, the ban pushes migration underground, and young women recruited for domestic work in the Gulf travel through informal channels where recruiters face no consequences. We wrote about that route in our TIP24 analysis and in Trafficked to Dubai. Nothing in the 2026 report suggests that has changed.
New routes: scam compounds, Russia and fishing fleets
The 2026 profile shows how fast recruitment is moving online. Traffickers “use technology to fraudulently recruit and exploit victims for cybercrime and online fraud operations”, and Ghanaians are exploited in online scam operations. Ghanaians were also fraudulently recruited to fight for the Russian military in Ukraine, lured by promises of security and farm jobs, a pattern we covered in trafficking for armed conflict. The report also cites allegations of forced labour among Ghanaian men on Ghana-flagged industrial fishing vessels owned by Chinese nationals.
The government’s own weakness here is named in the summary: officials “lacked specialized training and equipment to investigate trafficking-related cybercrimes.” Planned specialised courts for cyber-trafficking cases are a start.
Children: the same risks as last year
The child sections of the report barely move. Traffickers exploit Ghanaian children in fishing, domestic service, street hawking, begging, portering, artisanal gold mining, quarrying, herding and agriculture, and children from across West Africa in cocoa. Children are still in forced labour on Lake Volta, and women and girls in fishing communities are still exposed to sexual exploitation.
One sentence matters more to our work than any figure in the chapter. “Some traffickers exploit family practices which involve sending children to relatives to perform household services in exchange for educational or vocational opportunities.” That is what young people told us in our 2023 focus groups in northern Ghana: harmful work arranged through family is described as duty, and is rarely recognised as exploitation. We set out that evidence in our guide to child trafficking in Ghana.
Enforcement cannot reach that. Recognition can.
What Tier 1 does not measure
The tier system rates a government’s effort against traffickers: laws, prosecutions, victim services, prevention spending. It does not measure how many children in Walewale or Dushegu are offered an apprenticeship on the lake this year, or how many girls leave school to work as kayaye in Accra. It does not measure demand. The report says the government “made efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts” and gives no detail of what those efforts were.
The report also says the government funded “a significant amount of public awareness activities”. Awareness is only worth funding if it changes what young people and families do when an offer arrives. That is the standard we hold our own work to.
What should come next
- Hold fraudulent recruiters to account. The 2024 and 2026 reports both record no fraudulent recruiter held to account. That is the most direct way to protect Ghanaians heading to the Gulf.
- Ban recruitment fees paid by workers. Discouraging them is not enough.
- Remove the fine option for parents and guardians who traffic children.
- Fund shelters for adults, and stop relying on police officers’ own money.
- Count children. The report gives no figure for child victims. Without one, no one can tell whether the children most at risk are being reached.
- Invest in prevention where trafficking starts, in northern Ghana’s schools and communities, before a child leaves home.
The last point is where we work. Our SMART Schools Program runs inside the Ghana Education Service timetable in Tamale, teaching junior high school students to recognise risk, resist recruitment and name the adults they can turn to. Tier 1 is a good moment to make prevention part of what Ghana measures next. The real test is whether fewer children leave home for the lake, the mines and the markets.
Stay in touch
Join our mailing list
Occasional updates on our work in Northern Ghana, straight to your inbox.
