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Chad is a former French colony in
Central Africa that gained its independence in 1960. The country has been marred by decades of civil war as well as invasions
until some semblance of peace was finally achieved in 1990, although there have
continued to be rebel insurrections to the present day. This conflict has left
the economy and infrastructure in tatters, it's ranked the world's most corrupt
country, and this already impoverished nation also hosts tens of thousands of
refugees from the Central African Republic with 164,000 people displaced inside the country istelf. Chad is a country where even aid
agencies fear to work, with aid workers subject to being taken hostage by
bandits, and regular suspension of aid work programs occur due to the severe
danger to staff there. Despite being three times the
size of California, Chad has a population of 16.43 million (2020) and just 300 square
miles of irrigated land with just 2.8% of the entire country being arable.
Unlike
other African countries, Chad is seen to offer little to the outside world, with
its poor transport infrastructure including 33,400km of roads of which just
267km are paved. Chad also is off putting to visitors because of its high cost
of living. Child trafficking for sexual and other exploitation remains a
major concern about Chad and many children are taken for domestic servitude and
other forms of labour both in Chad and to other neighbouring nations with children also brought in from Cameroon and
the Central African Republic for the same purposes. Chad is in 187th place out of 189 countries and territories in 2019 when ranked
in terms of life expectancy, literacy, access to knowledge and the living
standards of a country with close to 66.2% of Chadians living in poverty and only 32% of the population is literate with most of
this poverty concentrated in rural areas, where 87% of the country's poor live.
Life is tough in Chad. Most have grown up
knowing violence and social instability, only 31.33% are literate dropping to 13.96% for females, those who go to school
share their teacher with seventy other pupils, most don't have
access to safe water and for the vast majority electricity is
unknown (only 10% of the population has reliable electricity and that rate falls to about 1% in rural areas). Life expectancy for a child in
Chad is just 54.24 years (2019) and, in the same year, the child mortality rate (under fives) for Chad was 113.8 deaths per 1,000 live births. Forced child labour is common with children having to work to help their family survive. Find out more about Chad in our Chad profile pages below.
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Chad Profile: Children in Chad
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Chad Profile: N'Djamena Profile
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Chad Profile: N'Djamena Airport
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Chad Profile: Child Sponsor Chad
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