As a professional law student interning at the Madina magistrate court, I was one morning rushing to court because I was running late when I found myself driving behind a motorbike with a child about five years old, holding flimsily onto the shirt of the biker.

He was wearing a helmet, but she wasn't. This was around the ARS roundabout. I watched him park at the nursery school right by the roundabout (name withheld). I was too late to stop and offer a caution, but I knew I couldn't let it slide.

The scene replayed in my mind all day throughout the proceedings in court. So on my way back, I couldn't bypass the school without reporting what I had seen. I stopped by and told the headmistress. Her response was that this was a normal practice, and that they had already cautioned such parents and guardians about the safety precautions, but to no avail.

Heading home, I pondered what could be done to prevent such children from facing looming danger.

Article 28(1)(d) of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992, says: "Children and young persons receive special protection against exposure to physical and moral hazards." We also have an entire Children's Act, 1998 (Act 560), meant to protect children from any and all forms of harm.

It seems this provision, like many others, remains a thing confined to our laws and not to the ground, a preserve for a section of the public: the rich. Their children get driven to school in comfort and with protection. The story is different for many others in Ghanaian society.

My earlier account is not a one off. Children being exposed to road dangers is a common sight on the streets of Accra. Driving to town every morning is tormenting for me, as I have to endure the sight of a six or seven year old stepping off the pavement alone, or holding the hand of a younger sibling to cross a busy road with no marked crossing, no signal, and no adult in sight.

It is not surprising, then, that according to the National Road Safety Authority, the country recorded 952 child deaths in road crashes between 2019 and 2021, 434 of them aged 10 to 17, and 188 aged 0 to 3. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, 116 child deaths from road crashes were recorded.

Young lives and future human capital, gone, because of parental negligence and our failure as a country to protect our children.

In neighbourhoods like Bawaleshie and its environs, this practice has become so normalised that it barely raises an eyebrow. Yet beneath that veneer of normalcy lies a disturbing reality: Ghana's children are paying the price for a systemic failure to bridge the gap between cultural tradition, legal obligation, and child protection.

A Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight

The numbers behind this normalcy are stark. A recent multicenter study by Anthony Baffour Appiah and colleagues across Ghana's teaching hospitals recorded 1,485 children treated for road traffic injuries between 2021 and 2024. Just over half of these, 51.1%, were pedestrian knockdowns: children simply trying to get from one place to another.

These statistics come from a crucial, peer reviewed study published in Injury Epidemiology titled "Epidemiology of pediatric road traffic injuries: a multicenter hospital based study in Ghana." This comprehensive data sheds light on a massive, preventable public health crisis affecting Ghanaian youth.

According to the study by Appiah and colleagues, most incidents happened during school trips, errands, or everyday travel, clustering in the afternoon (35.8%) and the morning rush (29.3%), exactly when children are walking to and from class.

Researcher Richard Dzinyela, commenting on the child pedestrian safety study, argued that the penalties for knocking down a child pedestrian should be severe enough that drivers slow down specifically where children are known to cross. It is a small recommendation, but it points to a larger truth: right now, the burden of caution falls almost entirely on the child.

These are not abstract statistics. They are children whose lives have been altered or ended, and families left to grieve in neighbourhoods that, the following Monday, go right back to the same routine. As one observer put it bluntly, elsewhere, losing a child to traffic would upend a community; here, it barely interrupts the school run. That is the quiet crisis at the heart of this piece, a society that has grown dangerously used to the risk its children carry every day.

The Security Dimension: Why Child Road Safety is a National Security Issue

As a PhD candidate in international security and intelligence, I see this crisis through a different lens. The daily loss of children to road crashes is not merely a public health failure; it is a national security threat that undermines Ghana's human capital, economic productivity, and social stability.

Human security, a concept that has gained prominence in international security discourse, recognises that the greatest threats to citizens often come not from external aggression but from preventable domestic dangers.

The United Nations Development Programme's human security framework identifies child protection as a core component of a secure society. When a nation cannot protect its children on their journey to school, it signals a fundamental failure of governance that erodes public trust in state institutions.

Consider this: the 952 child deaths recorded between 2019 and 2021 represent more than just numbers. Each child represents lost potential, a future doctor, engineer, teacher, or leader who will never contribute to Ghana's development. In security terms, this is human capital depletion, a slow bleeding of the nation's most valuable resource. When a country consistently loses its youth to preventable causes, it weakens its long term economic and social resilience, making it more vulnerable to other security threats.

Furthermore, the economic cost of road traffic injuries cannot be ignored. According to the World Health Organisation, road traffic crashes cost countries between 1% and 3% of their Gross National Product. For Ghana, this represents hundreds of millions of cedis lost annually in medical expenses, lost productivity, and disability care. These resources could otherwise be directed toward education, healthcare, and infrastructure development, all of which are essential components of national security.

The security dimension demands that we reframe child road safety as a priority for national development. It requires an approach that draws in every part of government, involving not just the Ministry of Transport and the National Road Safety Authority, but also the Ministry of National Security, the Police Service, and local governance structures. It demands that we treat every child death on our roads as a security incident worthy of investigation, accountability, and systemic reform.

The Cultural Paradox: Rights versus Responsibilities

Ghana holds a distinguished place in global child rights history as the first nation to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and as a pioneer in domestic child protection law. The 1992 Constitution and the Children's Act, 1998 (Act 560), guarantee children's rights to care, protection, and maintenance.

Yet there is a well documented gap between this legal framework and how it plays out in practice. The Western idea of children's rights, built around individual autonomy and state protected welfare, often sits uneasily alongside Ghanaian cultural values that prioritise communal obligation, respect for authority, and duty oriented upbringing.

Consider a parent in Bawaleshie who sends their six year old to the corner shop, or lets a five year old walk two streets over to meet a school van. This is rarely reckless indifference. Many parents genuinely believe they are building independence and resilience, the same way their own parents raised them, and for working parents balancing multiple jobs, it can also be the only practical option available and the child has no right whatsoever to question them or express fear.

However, intention and outcome are two different things, and when a child is struck crossing a road that has no crossing, no signal, and no slow down measures, the outcome is what matters.

The Legal Obligation: What the Law Demands

Ghana's legal framework is not ambiguous on this point, and it is worth reading the actual text, because the wording leaves little room for the "that's just how things are done" defence.

The Constitution. Article 28 of the 1992 Constitution is Ghana's dedicated Children's Rights clause. Article 28(1) instructs Parliament to pass laws ensuring that parents "undertake their natural right and obligation of care, maintenance and upbringing of their children," and that "children and young persons receive special protection against exposure to physical and moral hazards."

Article 28(2) goes further, guaranteeing every child the right to be protected from anything "that constitutes a threat to his health, education or development." A child weaving through unmarked traffic on a school run is, in plain terms, exposed to exactly the kind of physical hazard this article was written to prevent.

The Children's Act, 1998 (Act 560). Section 2, the Act's "Welfare Principle," states that the "best interest of the child shall be paramount in any matter concerning a child," and that this interest must be the primary consideration for "any court, person, institution or other body" dealing with a child, not just judges, but parents, schools, and communities. Section 6(2) sets out the child's right to "life, dignity, respect, leisure, liberty, health, education and shelter from his parents."

And Section 47, "Duty to Maintain a Child," specifies that a parent is "under a duty to supply the necessaries of health, life, education" and reasonable shelter, a duty of care that extends well beyond school fees and food to a child's basic physical safety.

Ghana has introduced stricter child road safety measures following the passage of the Road Traffic (Amendment) Act 2025, which significantly raises the minimum age for children allowed to sit in the front seat of vehicles. Under the new legislation, children under 12 years are not permitted to occupy the front seat of any vehicle. But what happens to the child below age 12 walking alone or walking an even younger sibling to school?

The same legislature that moved to protect children inside vehicles has remained conspicuously silent on the far more dangerous reality outside them. A child strapped into the back seat is shielded; a child navigating unmarked intersections, weaving through rush hour traffic, and guiding a younger sibling by the hand is not. The law protects the privileged, those with access to cars, while leaving the vulnerable to fend for themselves on roads that were never designed with their safety in mind. This legislative silence is not neutrality; it is a policy choice. And it is a choice that disproportionately affects the very children the Constitution and Children's Act were written to protect.

The Way Forward: From Acceptance to Action

The problem is systemic, not a matter of individual bad parenting. Parents are operating inside a cultural framework and a set of practical constraints, inadequate infrastructure, absent school transport, long work hours, that society has not addressed. The response has to work on several fronts at once: infrastructure, education, enforcement, and cultural engagement.

Infrastructure and urban planning: Appiah and colleagues have called for improved road infrastructure, including dedicated pedestrian routes with strict enforcement. In neighbourhoods like East Legon and Bawaleshie, the absence of safe crossings, traffic calming measures, and protected walkways turns an ordinary school journey into a daily gamble.

The same multicenter study behind the injury statistics called on local road safety authorities to intensify education and enforcement, backed by clear indicators to track whether interventions are actually working. Concretely, this means marked crossings, speed bumps, and assigned crossing personnel at unsignalised intersections near schools.

Reimagining parental responsibility: Cultural values shouldn't be dismissed, they should be worked with. Research on Ghana's children's homes found that caregivers often feel child rights principles complicate the care they are trying to provide, describing the tension as limiting rather than supportive.

The more effective path is to frame child road safety not as a foreign imposition, but as a natural extension of the same protective values Ghanaian culture already holds dear. Chiefs, church and mosque leaders, and respected elders, voices that already carry weight in these communities, are better positioned than any government pamphlet to shift everyday habits, such as insisting a younger sibling be walked all the way to the school gate.

A hybrid governance model has been proposed by some researchers for Ghana's child protection system more broadly, one that aligns legal definitions with real kinship and community structures, supports community based justice and diversion programs, and trains practitioners to work sensitively across cultural lines. Applied to road safety, this could mean formal recognition and support for the informal "auntie" or "uncle" on a street who already walks the neighbourhood children to school each morning.

School and community interventions: Because so many injuries happen during the school run itself, schools are a natural starting point. A structured "walking school bus," where adult volunteers escort small groups of children along a fixed route, is used successfully in many countries and would suit dense residential neighbourhoods well, where several families often live within a few streets of the same school.

Enforcement and accountability: The law already exists, what is missing is consistent enforcement, paired with an approach that doesn't simply punish parents caught in a bind with no good alternatives.

Security sector engagement: From a security perspective, the Police Service, particularly the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD), must be empowered to enforce child safety laws rigorously. This includes not only traffic enforcement but also public education campaigns that treat child road safety as a matter of national importance.

A Call to Action

The sight of a young child weaving through Accra's traffic alone should trouble the national conscience every single time, not just when a crash makes the news. Some of these injuries could be fatal. Ghana's pioneering role in child rights is a genuine point of national pride. It is also, unavoidably, a standing obligation.

The country that led the world in ratifying the is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), owes it to its children to lead in living up to it, closing the distance between the law on paper and the road outside the school gate, investing in infrastructure, working with communities rather than around them, and refusing to let another child's ordinary Wednesday morning become tomorrow's headline.

The children walking alone through Accra's streets deserve more than our passing concern. They deserve safe roads, protective communities, and a society that values their lives enough to act.

A hawker by the streets of Shiashie once had her toddler crawling along the gutter, and he almost fell into that huge ditch. Instead of lifting him, she landed heavy hits on the back of the child. I asked myself, how is the toddler supposed to know that that was danger? That is the typical Ghanaian parent or guardian mentality that we need to reorient.

Do we all not see these children walking around without guidance? Can we have specific laws enacted so that a child below, say, age 12, should not be seen walking alone? Why haven't such parents been arrested or questioned? Why have we normalised everything?

Child protection is a topical issue every day, not only when a child dies or is harmed due to negligence. This is a call to protect our children.

About the author:
Sangmorkie Tetteh
Adjunct Lecturer and PhD Candidate, University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), Professional Law Student, Ghana School of Law, Media Consultant and Gender Advocate
E-mail: sangmorkiet@gmail.com
LinkedIn: Sangmorkie Tetteh