The nomination for “Spotlight” comes from Togo, a small West African country of 5 million people, which has recently witnessed political turmoil and civil strife.

Mr. Cleophas Mally is the Director of WAO-Afrique, an NGO working against child trafficking and child labour. But not only is he a representative of an organisation but his commitment to defending the rights of children goes beyond the organizational mandate. In recent days when the possibility of sanctions on Togo by the international community was apparent due to the political turbulence in the country, Mr. Mally immediately evoked a meeting at WAO-Afrique to discuss about emergency actions to protect children in the county. “It is our responsibility to plan ahead our actions to protect the children in Togo, though I do not wish that we would come to the worst case scenario. The children need our support more than ever, and we will stand by to play our role and protect them from any possible harm,” said Mr. Mally.

Born in Togo on 30 March 1954, Mr. Cleophas Mally attended primary and secondary schools in Togo. After his High School Diploma, he furthered his studies at Université de Yaoundé in Cameroon and at Cardiff University in Wales where he received a diploma in translation with a specific focus on Developmental Sociology.

From 1998 to 2001, he won various scholarships which allowed him to improve and deepen his knowledge about civil rights, particularly the rights of the child with different international institutions and universities such as: ILO (Geneva) Anti-Slavery International (London), International Training Center of Turin (Italy), the Open University of Brussels (Belgium) and Université de Strasbourg (France).

In 1989, he joined the World Association for Orphans (WAO) and served as the Regional Representative of Africa until 1992. In, the chapter in Africa became an autonomous organisation as WAO-Afrique and Mr. Mally has led the organisation as its Director ever since.

While its initial focus was on helping orphaned children, valuable field experience has led WAO-Afrique to include specific actions to address the issues of child labour and to broaden its focus of activities on the promotion on the rights of children in Togo and in West Africa.

Since then, WAO-Afrique has been the most vocal organisation on the issue of child labour in Togo. More than 10 years ago, when WAO-Afrique first started addressing the issue of child labour, people reacted with much resistance or did not react at all, as it was not perceived to be a problem. Today, due to the efforts by WAO-Afrique and its partners, there is much wider acceptance that child trafficking, child labour and other violations of the children’s rights must be condemned, and a number of international, regional, and national organisations work closely together towards a common goal of putting an end to this phenomenon.

Due to its persistent advocacy, the government of Togo has taken up child labour as one of the priorities, and has invited ILO-IPEC to set up its program. The installation of major child labour elimination programs by international organisations would not have been possible without WAO-Afrique playing a crucial role to advocate the importance of combating child labour.

Today, WAO-Afrique is a regional non-governmental organisation which promotes and protects children’s rights, in particular the rights to be free from all forms of sexual and economic exploitation and from the threat of trafficking, and to receive quality basic education. Its secretariat is located in Lome, Togo, along with the Regional Documentation Center on the Rights of the Child.

In 2001, WAO-Afrique opened a center for retrieving and reintegrating the girl victims of child domestic labour and child trafficking, Centre de l’Esperence (Center of Hope). The center has served as a base for outreach to the children in need and to the communities. Social workers regularly visit the houses in the community where child domestic labour is prevalent and raise awareness on dangers of children being involved in domestic labour. Some visits have resulted in retrieving children from exploitative working conditions.

WAO-Afrique has also worked closely with community leaders such as village chiefs to spread awareness. Notably, WAO-Afrique has worked with a group of women who used to be employers of child domestic workers. They are now convinced against employing children in their homes and persuade other women in their villages also not to employ children. With micro credits that WAO-Afrique supported, these women also started small businesses and with the money they earn, they now send all the children in their household equally to school.

These efforts and experiences at grassroots level by WAO-Afrique has won the recognition at national, regional and international levels.

At national level, WAO-Afrique has contributed in building capacity of a number of organisations in Togo and helped the establishment of Forum des Organisations pour la Defense des Droits D’enfants au Togo (FODDET, Forum of Organisations for the Defense of the Rights of the Child in Togo). FODDET is an umbrella body of a number of specialised networks related to children’s rights. WAO-Afrique plays particularly active roles in the networks on child labour, child trafficking, education and the network of centers for the children in need.

At regional and international level, WAO-Afrique has served as a Francophone Africa’s Regional Coordinator for the Global March Against Child Labour since 1998. It is one of the few Southern-based grassroots organisations who are members of the NGO Group on the Rights of the Child, and plays an important role in influencing child rights policy at international level.

Mr. Mally serves on the International Council of the Global March. He is also a Board member of ECPAT—a network of organisations and individuals working together to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children, and a recently re-elected member of the board of the Global Campaign for Education. He is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the International Cocoa Foundation.

Owing to the aforementioned national, regional and international actions Mr. Mally was awarded the Body Shop Human Rights Awards in July 2000 on behalf of WAO-Afrique.

WAO-Afrique’s future plan includes a community mobilization project in communities at the borders between Togo and Benini/Ghana to tighten up the efforts to stop child trafficking. And the first of its kind of socio-psycho impact of child trafficking on the child victims in Togo will soon be published.