Due to increasing deaths of people as a result of AIDS so many children have been left as orphans with no body to take care of them and giving them support. Most of the children are left with their poor grandparents and some are left homeless hence ending up on streets.
As at the end of November 2004, the country’s record on births registered stood at 48.9%. This was expected to rise to over 50% by the end of 2004, meaning that the majority of children are denied this basic right.(Registry of Births and Deaths,2004) Approximately 96% of the poor, the majority of whom are women, live in rural areas (Ghana Statistical Service). A UNICEF project document (2009) on orphans and vulnerable children indicates that approximately 998,500 children in Ghana are orphaned and, of these, 80% come from poor families.
The child-headed household trend in Ghana is such that rural areas have 80.3%, of which 49.8% are male-headed and 30.5% are female-headed. The trend in urban areas is that of the 20% child-headed households, 10.8% are male-headed whereas 9.2% are female-headed (Ghana Statistical Service, 2009).
Children’s vulnerability to poverty, adversity, HIV is largely contextual but also indicative of the widespread situation in protecting them.
Ghana currently has 1 million orphaned children, 140,000 of them are orphaned by AIDS (Ghana AIDS Commission 2011 Dissemination of National Strategic Plan 2011-2015.). The number is expected to rise in the next decade and this will increase the risk of children turning to the streets, and becoming beggars and thieves.
The rise in the proportion of child-headed households and child labourers means a rise in percentages of the illiterate, early pregnancies, and related consequences such as infant and maternal mortality rates, increased incidence of those who are infected by sexually transmitted infections (STIs) HIV, and drug abuse. While the Government will continue to increase spending on reproductive health services, it will also be losing valuable human resources. The cycle of child poverty will thus be passed on to next generation and become chronic. It is evident that the HIV and AIDS scourge is increasingly taking its toll on those who should otherwise be enjoying childhood in Ghana.
A large proportion of deprived children have acquired psychopathological behaviour, increasingly becoming involved in crime, drug abuse and violence. Many, too, are vulnerable to HIV and yet enter the labour market at very young ages, all of which seriously affects their growth and well-being. Children under this category experience extreme poverty, which is compounded household, community and national poverty.
The magnitude and complexity of the problem of child poverty in Ghana is large and growing, and cannot be ignored when designing national development and poverty reduction strategies. Unfortunately, children and young people continue to be marginalized in spite of interventions, especially where assumptions are made that interventions that address adult and household needs are also good for all children, including boys and girls of school-going and non-school-going ages. This partly explains why child poverty is underrepresented in most studies on poverty in Ghana (Save the Children UK, 2003)
