Togo

The organisation’s website (http://www.diastode.org/index.html) features harrowing pictures of what it describes as the ongoing human rights abuses in Togo.

In downtown Lome there is an area known locally as “The Child Market,” where girls as young as nine are offered for sex, sometimes for less than a dollar. Child welfare groups complain that Togo lacks strong laws to punish the pimps who ruthlessly exploit these children. And the kids themselves complain that the police who patrol the district and are supposed to protect them, simply demand sex for free. Many of these girls have been separated from their families. Others have simply been aband...read more

A study just completed in Togo has revealed high levels of child abuse in the West African state. Almost 370 men, women and children were surveyed for the study, which found instances of paedophilia, illegal child labour, trafficking – and discrimination against children who were disabled, or from certain ethnic groups.

Togo has just opened its second university in the northern town of Kara, but the government can not afford to build a campus for it yet, so its lecturers and students are having to make do with the buildings of a former teacher training college. The government laid the foundation stone of Kara university four years ago, but it is still sitting in an empty field.

Ayele Ajavon is a happy woman, so she believes. After she was divorced by her husband, she sought solace in the church. ''I turned to the church and found a job and a new partner,'' says Ajavon, now a secretary in the capital Lome. But Ajavon cannot take any step or decision without consulting her pastor who also happens to be her ''new partner''. And she donates part of her salary to the church, as tithe.

Pages