Chad-Sudanese border: WFP boosts support for refugees uprooted by conflict 

UN humanitarians in Chad expressed concern on Tuesday at surging numbers of people fleeing conflict in Sudan and confirmed that that they have scaled up the Organization’s response to help the wounded and malnourished.

In the last week alone, some 20,000 people fled from Sudan’s Darfur region to Adré, a small Chadian town near the border. Many refugees arrived injured and with harrowing stories of violence they have endured in Sudan.

“Some 276,000 people now may have already crossed the border, hosted by Chad where we already have many food insecurities, with already some 600,000 refugees pre-war that were already almost impossible to assist” owing to a lack of funding, said Pierre Honnorat, WFP’s Country Director in Chad.

There are high rates of malnutrition among children crossing from Darfur into Chad. WFP estimates suggest that about 10 per cent of children are malnourished and need to be admitted to health centres in Adré quickly, putting significant pressure on already limited health facilities.

“On malnutrition, yes, children are dying. Children are dying”, said Mr. Honnorat as he briefed journalists on Zoom from Zabout refugee camp in Chad’s Goz Beida. “I don’t have the exact figure but,  every week children are dying at the nutrition centers. This is a reality.”

The UN agency said that its relief efforts along the Chad-Sudan border have become increasingly challenged due to a lack of resources. Since the start of the conflict in April, WFP has so far delivered food and nutrition assistance to nearly 152,000 new arrivals and to the host communities on the Chad-Sudan border.

“I’ve rarely seen such an important crisis with so little funding”, said the WFP country director. “I was also at the border, on the bridge, what’s left as a bridge. It’s a constant flow and the ones that are coming now are in much worse situations than those who arrived in the first days.”

Many of the people arriving in Chad from Sudan’s Darfurs are seriously wounded amid reports that fleeing civilians have been deliberated targeted with an increasing ethnic dimension to the violence.

So far, WFP has constructed six temporary health units, including two being used as a makeshift hospital and for medical logistics, and four as transit points for new refugees crossing into Chad.

“We can see that they have suffered, many lost family members and you don’t even dare asking them, ‘Where are the men?’ You know, the answer from the mothers is often that they were killed. So you see many women, many children, it’s just unbelievable,” said Mr. Honnorat.

As WFP mobilizes all available resources to support refugees arriving in Chad, it is also essential that WFP can safely deliver food assistance to civilians in the camps. 

“Children are laughing, playing, you can feel they have found peace, relief”, reported Mr. Honnorat. “This is, I think, the first thing they get is really peace when they are there. So those camps are extremely calm, it’s amazing. There is not much noise. Some have their animals. Then, when you get closer to the families, you see the distress in people, you see they are in need, you see they have nothing.”

Since fighting began on 15 April between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces after months of rising tension over the country’s political future and plans to integrate the RSF into the national army, large numbers of civilians have been forced to flee, including people who were already internally displaced because of previous conflicts in Sudan and refugees from other countries who had sought safety in Sudan.

In addition to new internal displacement, over 600,000 people, including Sudanese refugees and refugees of other nationalities hosted by Sudan have fled Sudan to neighbouring countries or returned home in adverse circumstances – notably to Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Egypt and Ethiopia.

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