The Country Director for International Justice Mission (IJM), Anita Budu, has defended some statements made by employees of the organisation captured in an exposé conducted by BBC Africa Eye.

The exposé titled, “The night they came for our children,” suggests that the IJM uses questionable means in their operations which seek to rescue trafficked children and reunite them with their families.

In some parts of the documentary, a staffer explains to an intern (undercover journalist) that the organisation sets a target for the number of children that must be rescued and the number of suspects who have to be arrested in a given time frame.

She further said, “We are committing resources, so we can’t commit a lot of resources for you to rescue just 10 children in a year. So the targets will be set, you also have to push yourself and achieve them.”

But Ms. Budu insists that the comments made by the staff in the recording have been taken out of context.

Speaking on Newsfile on Saturday, the Country Director said, “even though that is not the case directly there are situations where people may feel that and that is something that I will be looking into.”

She also denied that the IJM fires or refuses to increase the salaries of workers who fail to meet the target set by the organisation.

Ms Budu further explained that per her experience working with the organisation, she has come to the realisation that their employees are often driven by their passion to rescue the trafficked children, rather than meeting the target set for them by the organisation.

On the issue of the set targets, she justified that it was nothing out of the ordinary.

Ms Budu explained that setting targets is a characteristic of most organisations because it helps them to measure their productivity.

“Targets are given in all our work, so that we measure and we are measuring because we want to see that our work is having impact and there is change happening in this work that we are doing,” she stressed.

Background

The International Justice Mission (IJM) is an international non-governmental organisation that seeks to protect people in poverty from slavery.

They work with 17 countries around the world, of which Ghana is a part.

In Ghana, the IJM has been active since 2015, working to stop child trafficking and exploitation on Lake Volta

But in a new BBC Africa Eye investigation aired on Sunday, July 9 it was indicated that several rescue raids involving International Justice Mission (IJM), resulted in children being wrongfully taken from their families in Ghana.

Per reports by the BBC Africa Eye, they discovered that the IJM, prior to most of their rescue, was aware that some of the children had not been identified as trafficked, yet, they decided to support the raid by local authorities.