A/HRC/45/8/Add.1 ensure their child’s access to education. In practice, children often work as housemaids and do not go to school. Girls are disproportionally affected by that practice and by its consequences, which perpetuates and further increases their disadvantage in society. 40. Since families are smaller nowadays, children are often sent to cities on their own, instead of sending them to relatives as was the traditional practice. Even larger families are often unable to care for a child for reasons of economic precarity. 41. Child domestic workers often perform potentially hazardous tasks in private homes. Children who live in the house of their employers have a strong dependency on the latter, which increases their vulnerability to abuse and exploitation. If children are asked to contribute economically to their extended families, the risk of exploitation increases. During the Special Rapporteur’s visit, statistics on the number of children in confiage were not available, as the practice is not systematically assessed. 42. Due to the informality of the confiage practice, it is generally difficult to detect abuses in private homes and to hold abusive or exploitative hosts in a confiage arrangement to account. Even if the parents are aware of abuses taking place, they are often reluctant to file a complaint against their own relatives. 43. While the Special Rapporteur is concerned that children continue to be subjected to exploitative and in some instances abusive domestic work, she was told that, generally, children in domestic servitude are no longer below the age of 15. 44. At the time of the visit, there were no mechanisms in place to monitor and protect children living in informal alternative care arrangements, which perpetuates the impunity of exploitative confiage situations resulting in domestic servitude. Other forms of child labour 45. Government actors, human rights institutions and civil society organizations shared concerns with the Special Rapporteur regarding the continuing engagement of children in hazardous work in the informal sectors of economy. This includes the commercial sector, where children are seen to work in markets as porters and vendors; as well as construction sites and carpentry. In rural areas, children are reportedly engaged in agricultural work, including in the cotton fields, as well as on cocoa and coffee plantations. Anecdotal information suggests that children also perform hazardous work in extractive industries, including crushing rocks. However, the Special Rapporteur was unable to verify this information first-hand. Facilitation by criminal networks; and internal and regional trafficking 46. As highlighted in the case of the confiage practice, labour exploitation and sexual exploitation of children in Togo often occur as a result of trafficking. Togo is a source, transit, and to a lesser extent, destination country for men, women and children subjected to trafficking for forced labour and sexual exploitation. The majority of the victims of trafficking are Togolese children exploited within the country. Traffickers reportedly bring children from rural areas to Lomé, where they are subjected to forced labour as domestic servants, roadside vendors, and porters. The Special Rapporteur was equally made aware of cases of trafficking of children for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. According to the national authorities, Togo is a country of origin for trafficking to neighbouring countries, namely Benin, Burkina Faso and Ghana, as well as Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Niger.16 There are reports of violence, abuse and other human rights violations affecting some of these children. 17 Most of the victims detected in Togo are Togolese nationals, but foreign victims are also trafficked from neighbouring countries. 16 17 8 See www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/glotip/Glotip16_Country_profile_SubSaharan_Africa.pdf. INTERPOL, “Human trafficking: hundreds rescued in West Africa” (2019), available at www.interpol.int/es/Noticias-y-acontecimientos/Noticias/2019/Human-trafficking-hundreds-rescuedin-West-Africa.