[The following is a Barh Koh ESDA compilation of reports from various sources]

TORONTO, 8 November 2007 Children’s lives are being threatened all across Chad but particularly in the east near the border with Darfur. They live amongst armed conflict between the government and rebel groups, cross-border raids by militias from neighboring Sudan, and inter-ethnic violence. Many lack access to food, water and healthcare.


Children in Chad never have enough to eat
Save the Children estimates that at least half the 180,000 displaced Chadians and 230,000 Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad are children. “What the displaced, refugee and local populations have access to now is mainly provided by local NGOs and international aid agencies,” said Aurélie Lamazière, of Save the Children UK’s emergencies department.

Education
Chad’s UNICEF representative, Mariam Coulibaly Ndiaye, said the state of education in Chad was deplorable. “When you go to a village, sometimes there is no school. When there are schools, there are not enough teachers. When communities get together to find teachers, they have not been trained,” she said. On average, 60 percent of children are in school, she said, but in some regions, especially in the east, the percentage drops to 30 percent. Many children sit on the dirt under trees to study. In October, a joint report by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and other humanitarian agencies working in eastern Chad found that the level of education among displaced children in the care of humanitarian aid agencies was higher than level of education in the areas from which they came.

Grave child rights violations
The UN Secretary General’s July report highlighted an array of problems for Chad’s five million children – more than half the population. Among his concerns of “grave child rights violations” was the exploitation of 10-year-old girls for housework; the maiming of young boys working as livestock herders; child trafficking within Chad; and the forced and early marriage of girls.