UN Authority Figures

UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Board: Chad

Children in Chad engage in the worst forms of child labor, including forced labor in cattle herding and domestic work, each sometimes as a result of human trafficking. Photo: Chad refugee children (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
Source: U.S. Bureau of International Labor, September 2020

Mission of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF): "UNICEF is mandated by the UN General Assembly to advocate for the protection of children's rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential. UNICEF is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and strives to establish children's rights as enduring ethical principles and international standards of behaviour towards children. UNICEF mobilizes political will and material resources to help countries, particularly developing countries, ensure a "first call for children" and to build their capacity to form appropriate policies and deliver services for children and their families. UNICEF is committed to ensuring special protection for the most disadvantaged children - victims of war, disasters, extreme poverty, all forms of violence and exploitation and those with disabilities. UNICEF responds in emergencies to protect the rights of children. In everything it does, the most disadvantaged children and the countries in greatest need have priority." (UN Children's Fund website, "UNICEF's Mission Statement")

Term of office: 2022-2024

Chad's Record on Children:
"Human rights organizations cited the problem of the mouhadjirin, migrant children who attended certain Islamic schools and whose teachers forced them to beg for food and money. There was no reliable estimate of the number of mouhadjirin... According to UNICEF, 67 percent of girls were married before age 18... The law prohibits sexual relations with children younger than age 14, even if married, but authorities rarely enforced the ban... Medical professionals in N'Djamena reported a sixfold upsurge in sexual assault on underage girls toward the end of the rainy season, attributed to rising insecurity. International Child Abductions: The country is not a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction."
(U.S. State Department's Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2020, Chad)

Archive