Almost one million people have fled into neighboring Chad in the nearly two years since war broke out in Sudan, a consortium of international agencies has said.
The 23 organizations said in a press release that those displaced included more than 720,000 Sudanese and more than 220,000 Chadians who returned home because of the conflict.
The release said that nine out of 10 people forced into displacement were women and children and many had endured terrible acts of violence, including torture, rape and sexual slavery.
The international humanitarian organizations operating in eastern Chad warned that the majority of those refugees and returnees do not have access to the protection and education assistance they direly need.
“Most refugees cross the border with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and an abundance of harrowing stories,” the press release quotes Alix Camus, President of the INGO Forum and country director of Acted, which supports the management of the transit site in Adré, near the border.
“Many have to cope with a great deal of trauma which can, and should, be addressed with a bigger focus on child protection, education, mental health as well as treatment and prevention of sexual and gender-based violence. Yet, faced with an emergency crisis of this magnitude on the one hand, and scraps of funding on the other, that type of assistance is placed on the backburner. It should be considered vital seeing what people have gone through,” it further quotes Camus.
Chad hosted around a third of newly displaced Sudanese refugees in 2024, bringing the world’s largest displacement crisis to one of the world’s poorest countries. Since April 2023, humanitarian organisations in Chad, including many local and national responders, have rushed to scale up the response with scant resources and deliver lifesaving aid such as food, water and shelter for Sudanese refugees and Chadian returnees.
The release disclosed that only 30 per cent of the Refugee Response Plan in Chad was funded in 2024, and even food assistance fell drastically short of covering their daily needs.
The signatory organizations include Acted, Action contre la Faim (ACF), CARE, Concern Worldwide (CWW), Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and Diakonie.
Others are Katastrophenhilfe Enfants du Monde, Humanité & Inclusion (HI), INSO, International Medical Corps (IMC)’ International Rescue Committee (IRC), INTERSO and Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS).
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), OXFAM, Plan International, Première Urgence Internationale (PUI), Qatar Charity Relief International, Secours Islamique, France (SIF) Solidarités International, Tearfund and Triangle Génération Humanitaire (TGH) also signed the press release.