Projects

The prefectures of Doufelgou and Kéran, where the project will be implemented, are located in the Kara region. This area located in the northern part of Togo is a victim of child trafficking, which is one of the most serious human rights violations in the world today.

Children and their families are lured by false promises from trafficking networks – promises of a better future, prospects of escaping poverty – and every year hundreds of children are smuggled across borders and sold as mere commodities. Their survival and development are threatened, and they are deprived of their rights to education, health, growing up in a family, and protection from exploitation and abuse.

Most trafficked children work in domestic service, restaurants, and markets; in the sex industry for girls; and on plantations or in diamond mines. Their preferred destinations are Nigeria, Gabon and Côte d’Ivoire.

This phenomenon is rooted in the increased demand for cheap labor and the increase in poverty linked to structural adjustment programs and the economic crisis of the mid-1990s.

In a 2002 study of 650 households by the NGO Plan-Togo, a majority of households affected by child trafficking, 90% of which were in the Doufelgou and Kéran prefectures, were engaged in subsistence farming and could not afford to send their children to school.

Thus, poverty is a “major and pervasive” cause of child trafficking. In Togo, between 33 and 73 percent of the total population lives on less than one U.S. dollar a day.

Despite the law’s guarantee of free primary education, “parents still say they can’t afford the school fees,” a judge in the northern city of Bafilo, familiar with many cases of trafficked children, told Human Right Watch.

In its 2001 global overview of child trafficking, ILO-IPEC noted that “children without access to education often have no alternative but to seek work from an early age.

For girls, some experts believe that trafficking stems from a long tradition of parents using their daughters as domestic servants rather than sending them to school.

In 2002, girls in Togo were estimated to be 20 percent less likely than boys to be enrolled in elementary school and 25 percent less likely to reach high school. In 1994, the NGO Anti-Slavery International (ASI) and the African branch of the World Association of Orphans (WAO-Africa) noted that “in Togo, it has been shown that parents prefer to direct girls rather than boys to domestic work, not only because household chores are traditionally seen as ‘women’s work’ but also because the girl’s salary helps finance her brothers’ schooling.”

Studies have also linked child trafficking to the breakdown of the family unit caused by divorce or the death of a parent. The 2001 ILO-IPEC study on child trafficking in Togo showed that of the 96 children interviewed who were victims of trafficking, almost 30 percent had lost their mother, father, or both parents, most of them to HIV/AIDS.

Thus, it was observed that AIDS orphans spent less time in school and in some cases dropped out completely and became easy prey for child traffickers. A vicious circle is created because these children, left to their own resources with no moral, financial or emotional support, are vulnerable and likely to fall into delinquency (theft, drugs) and prostitution and eventually meet the same fate as their parents, namely to die of AIDS.

In addition to poverty, the collapse of family structures and HIV-AIDS, children in rural areas and street children are also easy prey for traffickers.

Following the first World Congress against Commercial and Sexual Exploitation of Children in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1996, Togo, aware of the phenomenon, developed a National Plan to Combat Child Labor and Trafficking. While implementation of some of these measures has begun, the Togolese government has so far been unable to interfere with the private arrangements between parents, children, and traffickers, let alone address the social and economic roots of this problem.

It is to complement the government’s efforts that the Association des Amis des Enfants, which is closer to the population, is initiating this project.

General
To contribute to the reduction of the phenomenon of child trafficking in the northern part of Togo.

Specific
> To improve the living conditions of 150 vulnerable children by helping them to develop through education based on human values.

> To make parents aware of their responsibility to protect their children from child traffickers

> Children in the Doufelgou and Kéran prefectures are protected from trafficking and forced labor.

> 150 children benefit from conditions favorable to their development.

> The populations of the project area have become aware of the responsible education of children.

> Women’s groups (50 women) are trained in agro-sylvopastoral activities for food security and environmental preservation.