A family gathers in front of their makeshift shelter in Adre, Chad, on July 18. The lack of basic amenities, such as clean water and proper sanitation, highlights the harsh conditions they endure daily.
Sixteen months after the world’s worst displacement crisis began, hundreds of Sudanese refugees are still fleeing across the border to Chad every day.
More than 10 million people have been forced from their homes since the war erupted in Khartoum and spread across Sudan in April, 2023 – the largest number in the world. Most are still in Sudan, but about two million have crossed into neighbouring countries – including more than 630,000 who have sought shelter in Chad, putting enormous strain on the country. The number is expected to climb above 900,000 by the end of this year.
Dozens of overcrowded camps and haphazard settlements in eastern Chad are suffering shortages of food and health care. Funding to United Nations agencies is far short of its targets, leaving the refugees in difficult conditions. Food rations have been reduced by budget cuts.
Thousands of refugees have arrived in Chad with war injuries, sometimes walking for two weeks to reach the border. Most are from non-Arab ethnic groups that have been targeted by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an Arab-dominated paramilitary force that has battled against the Sudanese military since the war began.
After being injured and forced to relocate multiple times, 50-year-old Sadeya Mohamed Abdallah reached Chad only to face further suffering, including the amputation of her leg owing to inadequate medical care.
“We struggle to make ends meet every day,” said Sadeya Mohamed Abdallah, a 50-year-old Sudanese farmer who brought her family to the Farchana refugee camp in eastern Chad.
Her family has a small garden in the camp, but it yields too little. “I try to find comfort in my faith, but it is hard when every day brings new challenges and uncertainties,” she told The Globe and Mail.
Originally from El Geneina, in the Darfur region of western Sudan, she has endured harrowing ordeals during the war. The RSF massacred thousands of people in El Geneina last year, according to UN reports.
Ms. Abdallah was forced from her home when she was injured in an attack by the RSF, and then had to relocate several more times, evading a series of dangerous military checkpoints, before finally reaching Adré in eastern Chad earlier this year.
By then, her condition had grown worse, because she could not get adequate medical help. Her leg was eventually amputated.
The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, has appealed for about US$220-million to help the refugees in eastern Chad this year, but it has received only 37 per cent of the needed funds so far. The UN’s broader appeal for funds for the entire Sudan crisis has received less than 40 per cent of what it needs this year.
A UNHCR camp near Farchana, Eastern Chad, where approximately 60,000 Sudanese refugees have found shelter following the conflict in Darfur.
The family home of Zakya Yagoub Khamis was destroyed by a recent storm, marking the beginning of the rainy season's challenges in Farchana.
Nearly 90 per cent of the refugees in Chad are women and children. Many cannot afford basic health care for their families.
“We are suffering from many problems, including violence against women,” said Mariam Adam Hussain, a 49-year-old refugee in the Farchana camp who fled from El Geneina.
“The shortage of health services is acute, especially for pregnant women, with only one clinic available, which most cannot afford,” she told The Globe.
“They don’t give us enough to live on. We’re stuck here with no way out, and it feels like we’re being kept down on purpose. When you don’t have food or medicine, it’s not just about being poor. It’s like they’re making sure we stay weak and can’t move forward.”
In small gardens outside their homes in the Farchana camp, refugees manage to grow small amounts of vegetables, but they are not sufficient for daily survival.
Following the destruction of her makeshift home by Chadian police and the loss of her nursing career, Baedrea Bakit Abakar, from El Geneina, now relies on selling vegetables by the roadside in Adré to support her eight children.
One refugee woman, Souad Omar Aldoum, said women and girls are often coerced into sexual relationships in exchange for basic necessities. When they search for firewood, because of a lack of other energy sources, they are vulnerable to violence from the officials who control the forests, she said. “Our living conditions are extremely hard.”
Heavy storms and flooding have recently destroyed many of the refugee homes. More than 200,000 refugees in temporary settlements in eastern Chad are still awaiting a move to permanent sites with better facilities.
Hundreds of homes in refugee camps have been destroyed by angry residents and police as a result of local land conflicts. Baedrea Bakit Abakar, a 35-year-old woman from El Geneina, said her children watched as Chadian police tried to destroy her thatched home in the Adré camp to force her to move.
Although UNHCR intervention prevented further damage, she had to repair her house at her own expense. Ms. Abakar, a nurse, is prohibited from practising her profession in Chad and relies on selling vegetables by the roadside to support her eight children, two of whom are ill.
People continue to arrive in Chad daily. Fatou Mohammed, a 20-year-old student from El Fasher, the besieged capital of North Darfur, recently crossed the border with her family after selling all their property. She still hopes to return to her studies in Sudan someday.
“I want to continue studying veterinary medicine in Chad, but it’s not possible,” she said. “Before the war, life went without the problems with our Arab neighbours. The war turned everything upside-down.”
Fatou Mohammed, 20, and her family face the challenge of settling into the refugee camp in Adré. 'I want to continue studying veterinary medicine in Chad, but it’s not possible,' she says. 'The war turned everything upside-down.'
With a report from Geoffrey York in Johannesburg