Courts in Ghana’s Upper West Region have this week sentenced two men for sexual offences against minors, even as parallel proceedings in Kenya, Peru and the United Kingdom highlight how legal systems across three continents still struggle to deliver timely and effective justice for child victims of sexual abuse. According to Ghanaian police statements, a 42-year-old man received ten years’ hard labour for defiling a seven-year-old boy, and a 47-year-old was sentenced to twenty years for incest against his teenage daughter. The cases reached verdicts within months of the arrests.

In Kenya’s Busia County, by contrast, a family describes a four-year ordeal marked by repeated adjournments, missing court files and allegations of witness intimidation, with the case still unresolved despite a ruling that the accused must answer charges. Viewed from Nairobi, the delays underscore systemic bottlenecks that child-protection advocates say betray victims a second time. In Peru, the Amazonian Awajún women’s council has decried the state’s failure to arrest a man accused of raping a six-year-old girl, who fled twice in a week; the family’s temporary shelter and lack of economic support for the mother further expose what regional rights groups call a justice gap for indigenous communities.

From London, UN special rapporteurs last week warned that Britain’s imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences—one of which has kept Thomas White incarcerated for fourteen years, nine years beyond his tariff, for a mobile phone robbery—amount to “psychological torture” and violate human rights. His family, who campaigned for his transfer to a secure hospital, say his return to prison after only nine months of treatment will restart a cycle of mental deterioration and indefinite detention. The rapporteurs’ intervention highlights the international dimension of a debate over open-ended penalties that Britain scrapped in 2012 but did not apply retrospectively, leaving nearly 2,400 people detained without release dates.

The Ghanaian police command has publicly reaffirmed its commitment to pursuing abuse cases and urged swift reporting, while a court-directed psychosocial support programme for one survivor signals a recognition of victim rehabilitation. Yet, as the Kenyan and Peruvian dossiers show, the gap between legal frameworks and enforcement often widens in resource-constrained environments. The next factual steps: in Ghana, the convicts begin their terms; in Busia, a new magistrate is due to take up the case; Peruvian authorities have dispatched police but must still overcome logistical hurdles; and Britain’s new government faces growing pressure to resentence IPP prisoners. The dossier remains acutely unfinished.