Women in Chad, a landlocked country in Central Africa, are the mainstay of its predominantly rural-based economy and they outnumber the men. Women face widespread discrimination and violence. Female genital mutilation, while technically illegal, is still widely practiced. Extrajudicial killings, beatings, torture, and rape were committed by security forces and other abuses with "near total" impunity. Amnesty International has reported that "The widespread insecurity in eastern Chad had particularly severe consequences for women, who suffered grave human rights abuses, including rape, during attacks on villages" by Janjawid militia from Sudan.
Education
Despite the government's efforts, overall educational levels remained low at the end of the first decade of independence. In 1971 about 99 percent of women over the age of fifteen could not read, write, or speak French, which at the time was the only official national language; literacy in Arabic stood at 7.8 percent. In 1982 the overall literacy rate stood at about 15 percent. Major problems have hindered the development of Chadian education since independence. Financing for education has been very limited. Limited facilities and personnel also have made it difficult for the education system to provide adequate instruction. Overcrowding is a major problem; some classes have up 100 students, many of whom are repeaters. In the years just after independence, many primary-school teachers had only marginal qualifications. On the secondary level, the situation was even worse. In 2004, 39.6 percent of children ages 5 to 14 years were attending school. Educational opportunities for girls are limited, mainly due to cultural traditions. Fewer girls enroll in secondary school than boys, primarily due to early marriage. In 1999, 54.0 percent of children starting primary school reached grade 5.
Women's rights
Human trafficking
Chad is a source and destination country for children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically conditions of forced labor and forced prostitution. The country’s trafficking problem is primarily internal and frequently involves parents entrusting children to relatives or intermediaries in return for promises of education, apprenticeship, goods, or money; selling or bartering children into involuntary domestic servitude or herding is used as a means of survival by families seeking to reduce the number of mouths to feed. Underage Chadian girls travel to larger towns in search of work, where some are subsequently subjected to prostitution. Some girls are compelled to marry against their will, only to be forced by their husbands into involuntary domestic servitude or agricultural labor. In past reporting periods, traffickers transported children from Cameroon and the CAR to Chad’s oil producing regions for commercial sexual exploitation; it is unknown whether this practice persisted in 2009.
60 percent of Chadian women had been subject to female genital mutilation in 1995. The procedure is a traditional rite of passage as a girl moves into adulthood and it is followed regardless of religious orientation. It is equally common amongst Muslims, Christians and animists. Those who attain adulthood without being mutilated generally avoid it for life. Over 80 percent of the girls in Chad who suffered genital mutilation had been cut between the age of 5 and 14.
