The schoolboy fighting his parents for the right to leave Ghana

The unidentified parents tricked him into visiting an ill relative in Ghana in March 2024, and he ended up in a boarding school, according to court records. The case was heard in the London High Court after the “scared and desperate” boy emailed the British High Commission in Accra and contacted the charity Children and Family Across Borders, who put him in touch with lawyers at the International Family Law Group.

His dispute was that he was deceived, and if he had known he was being sent to boarding school in Ghana, "there would have been no way I would have agreed to it," he wrote to the court. The boy, who had lived in the UK since birth, added that he was "mocked" and "never settled in" at the school in Ghana, and he just wants to go back home.

The High Court in London ruled in favour of the parents who argued that they feared for their son’s safety in London and the relocation wasn’t a form of punishment. 

The court ruled in favour of the parents in February 2025, and in June, the boy won a Court of Appeal bid for the case to be reheard.

Global South World spoke with the boy’s solicitor, James Netto of The International Family Law Group, about the extent of the rights of children under the full custody of their parents.

“What we were arguing is that… the older a child becomes and grows into a young person, into teenage years, into their adolescence and adulthood, the parental control, the parental rights over that young person, is diluted ever so often. And there's lots of case law that we have about young persons, if they understand what's going on, they can consent themselves to say medical treatment or issues concerning their religion or schooling or health care or housing,” he told Ismail Akwei in an interview.

James Netto added that the real conflict in this case is the parents admitting to deceiving the boy to move to Ghana as a form of protection, which “was the issue that the judge struggled with.”

“It was a huge shock to the parents. I think the court and all the lawyers in the room have a tremendous amount of sympathy for them, but they also have a tremendous amount of sympathy for him as well. I don't envy the judge who had to make the decision at the first time round because it is such a finely balanced polemic issue,” he said. 

“It came down to his strongly held wishes and feelings, the fact that his parents had deceived him into travelling as well. That was a very big factor, both for the first judge and also for the Court of Appeal. And also it was his very strong wishes to return to his home, which is in London. It's impossible to say what the court would have done in other circumstances, but it's not a UK versus Ghana case,” he said.

According to James Netto in an email shortly after the interview, they expect the date of the final hearing to be fixed on June 30, 2025 or later, and the family is considering mediation outside of the court.

Watch the full interview attached above.