Child Sponsor Togo

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Togo, with its population of 6.6million, is located in West Africa with Ghana to its west, Benin to its east and Burkina Faso to its north with its southern border meeting the Gulf of Guinea. Following independence form France in 1960 Togo came under a number of oppressive regimes until tentative steps towards democracy started to emerge in 2007. Despite this, many see these steps as stalled and Togo remains relatively unstable and one of the poorest countries in the world with many of its citizens living in neighbouring countries such as Benin having fled there following the violence that engulfed the 2005 elections.

Due to perceived human rights abuses, the EU cut aid to the country in 1993 and its remains suspended although some NGOs are returning to the country after the 2007 elections which were broadly seen as fair. Today Togo is in 159th place out of 186 countries and territories in 2013 when ranked in terms of life expectancy, literacy, access to knowledge and the living standards of a country with a life expectancy of just over 57yrs. Half of Togo's population live under the international poverty line, one out of every thirty children in Togo die of the preventable disease malaria, accounting for 25% of all childhood deaths, not least because, although the disease in rampant, only about 15% of children under the age of five in Togo sleep under a malaria net despite being available for just a pound or so, but out of the reach of poor families.

Child sponsor programs in Togo work with orphaned and abandoned children, the promotion of children's rights in a country where culturally children are seen to have no rights and harsh, physical abuse of them is seen as acceptable as is enforced hard labour, access to education and healthcare and developing secure food and water supplies. Other work supports the 13,575 refugees from Ghana and the 5,000 from the Ivory coast who reside in the country. You can help when your sponsor a child in Togo.