By Mavis Paintsil, Accra
A new body, Civil Society Coalition Against Transnational Crime, has been launched in Accra with a call for stronger collaboration among government, civil society, traditional authorities, communities and the private sector to tackle the growing threat of organised crime in Ghana.
The coalition, launched today in Accra to mark International Youth Day, seeks to coordinate civil society organisations working across nine fronts, including human trafficking, cybercrime, illicit finance, illegal mining, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, maritime crime, extremism and corruption.
The initiative follows a national forum held on July 30, 2026, dubbed “Trapped Behind the Scam”, which brought together government institutions, the United Nations, civil society groups, survivor networks, financial and technology sectors, academics, the media and young people to discuss the growing incidence of trafficking for forced criminality.
At the launch, the Convener of the coalition, Princess Yanney, said the initiative was born out of the need to ensure that people rescued from trafficking situations were properly identified and supported rather than automatically treated as criminals.
She referred to the rescue of the nine people and the arrest of 10 suspects at Afienya on July 21,2026,saying the incident raised questions about what happened to those rescued.
Was anybody assigned to them? was there a file?Did anyone sit down with each of them and askthe questions that determine whether a person has been trafficked? she asked.
Princess Yanney said the coalition would establish a register of its founding members and nine working groups, with each group responsible for engaging relevant institutions on a specific area of organised crime.
She said the coalition would also operate under a charter requiring members to uphold safeguarding, ethical conduct and conflict of interest standards.
We are one Coalition working nine fronts of a single economy,” she said, explaining that the different forms of organised crime were often interconnected.
The Chairman of the occasion, Professor Caesar Apentiik, said organised crime was no longer an abstract security concern but an entrenched and evolving threat that required urgent collective action.
He cited the 2025 Global Organised Crime Index, which placed Ghana’s criminality score at 5.77 out of 10, ranking the country 21st out of 54 African countries and sixth out of 16 in West Africa.
He said the figures reflected serious concernes,including human trafficking and crimes involving non renewable resources.
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