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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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As world’s water reserves change, countries must prepare for a new reality: WMO
New data showing that rivers were at their lowest level for decades last year provides further evidence that the climate crisis is real and countries must act immediately to protect themselves from the increasing threat to communities and livelihoods, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.
The key findings from WMO’s State of Global Water Resources 2025 report covering the hydrological cycle and extreme events in the five-year period to last year:
- 2025 was one of driest years for river discharge in 35 years
- Past seven years have seen abnorfmal river flows
- Water storage on Earth’s land surface has decreased in past decade
- Widespread glacier loss across all regions for fourth consecutive year
- Asia and Africa are regions most affected by water-related disasters
- Water data availability has improved, but gaps remain in hard-hit areas
Highlighting the long-term decline in the Earth’s freshwater storage and glacier melt, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo explained that the planet’s water reserves used to act as a planetary “savings account” that absorbed the occasional dry season, avoiding a water crisis. “One of the central stories of the 2025 report is what is happening to that savings account? And the simple answer is that we are depleting it,” she told journalists in Geneva.
Groundwater reserves are equally stretched and have been in decline since 2014, WMO’s report states, with nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showing levels lower than the historical norm and indicating a shift “further toward deficit…not recovery”.
“At the same time, we are seeing more water-related disasters,” Ms. Saulo said, while also stressing that the currently strengthening El Niño “will increase the risk of drought in some areas, and flooding in others”.
Glaciers disappearing
In 2025, for the fourth consecutive year, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass, leading to short-term hazards including floods and long-term water insecurity, according to WMO.
Responding to a question about whether the changing global water cycle might have contributed to the deadly Nepal-China flooding disaster, Ms. Saulo explained that melting ice and rock was just one factor in the chain of events that ultimately sent a massive and deadly wall of water and debris downstream on 26 August, killing at least 1,367 people.
“You asked if it could happen again? Absolutely; the problem in this region is that there’s 63,700 glaciers at the last count,” she told a Press Conference in Geneva. “Even if you’re looking with remote sensing with satellites at these glaciers, you might see some faults, you might see some slight shifting, that does not mean necessarily catastrophic collapse. So, in order to plan for this, it’s very, very difficult. But the international community is looking very hard at ways in which we can bring people together to solve some of these monitoring issues.”
Data indicates that glaciers shrank between 2023 and 2025 with cumulative losses of 1,400 gigatonnes of water – or about one third of annual fresh water needs.
Every major glacier region on Earth lost ice for the fourth consecutive year.
“All 19 glacier regions around the globe lost ice; in Central Asia, Iceland, the Russian Arctic and western Canada and the United States, it was among the three worst years on record,” said Wayne Jenkinson, WMO’s Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere.
Some regions with smaller glaciers such as Central Europe, the Caucasus, the western Canada and the United States may already have reached “peak water”, Mr. Jenkinson warned.
“After this point, the glacier gives less meltwater each year simply because there is less ice left to melt. That matters for every community downstream that relies on water during hot, dry summers,” he explained.
Narelle van der Wel, WMO’s Head of Cryosphere Monitoring, Predictions and Services, stressed that while some further glacier loss is unavoidable, the eventual scale of the decline is not predetermined.
“Some glacier loss is inevitable, but total loss of glaciers is not yet inevitable,” she said, pointing to emissions reductions as central to limiting future losses.
Preparing for moving baselines
The report does not attribute every observed change to climate change alone. WMO says pressure on water resources and natural variability also contribute.
Mr. Jenkinson said governments need to prepare for “moving baselines” as historical patterns become less reliable.
“The situation 30 years ago is not where we are today,” he said. Countries, he added, need to prepare “for those changes that have really already arrived”.
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