It’s a measure of the confusion caused by the Trump administration’s funding cuts to international aid that, when initially asked, the World Food Programme (WFP) in Chad believed it was not affected. A day later it confirmed to The Irish Times that the new cuts would, in fact, lead to a reduction in the humanitarian air service UNHAS which provides emergency support for aid agencies in the region.
All cuts affect the whole aid system. The UNHCR says humanitarian funding is already at 30 per cent of what is needed. The WFP says the Trump administration’s cuts more generally “could amount to a death sentence for millions of people experiencing extreme hunger and starvation”.
The Sudan war is one of the biggest humanitarian disaster in the world. By some estimates, since April 2023, 150,000 people have been killed, 12 million have been displaced and eight million are at risk of starvation. Of the displaced, 760,000 have crossed the border into the Ouddai province in east Chad.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has its roots in the Janjaweed militia, is one of the factions in Sudan’s civil war and it has been committing a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Masalit people in the Darfur region.
There are high levels of childhood malnutrition all over Chad ... Malnutrition weakens our systems ... That leads to the mortality rate going up, especially for children
— Robert Bachefor, World Food Programme
The majority of refugees are women and children because the RSF prevents Masalit men from leaving the country. Many of the men are murdered and many of the women have experienced sexual violence.
The refugees are spread across official refugee camps in the province, but 237,000 of them are in an unofficial “transit site” at the once small border town of Adre.
Adre is now, by population, the third biggest city in Chad, but it is a city of straw huts that stretches out across the desert. It’s an arid landscape where farming is only possible during the rainy season. Even before the arrival of the new refugees, hunger and thirst were huge issues. Environmental degradation means the soil is not as good as it once was and there are now too many farmers on too little productive land.
The UNHCR and other aid agencies do their best to drill wells, support local market gardens and invest in infrastructure, but this is very costly and the humanitarian response is already severely underfunded. In several locations they have built concrete flood management systems on the dry riverbeds to stop groundwater from the rainy season from flowing away from the water table. Outside the official Farchana refugee camp a group of women collect cloudy water from holes dug deep into the dry riverbed.
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People are hungry. The WFP provides a ration of 90g of cereals, 150g of pulses, 25g of oil and 5g of salt per person per day for 500,000 people. Even before the current cutbacks, the WFP was dealing with a 40 per cent drop of funding for the year.
“Rations cover the basic caloric and nutritional needs,” says Robert Bachofer, head of the WFP office in Farchana which also oversees Adre. “Is that something that gives people the satisfaction to eat as you would like? The answer is probably not. It’s keeping people alive ... There are high levels of childhood malnutrition all over Chad ... Malnutrition weakens our systems ... That leads to the mortality rate going up, especially for children. A lot of children die.”
At a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Adre we are given a tour by nurse manager Marcellin Mentchechougo and a Sudanese refugee and former medical student named Yusef Saleh who helps to translate. In a courtyard, women queue to have their babies weighed and their wrists measured. In a ward of babies suffering the more serious effects of malnutrition, Acha Mousa strokes her little boy Aly’s head. Aly is suffering from marasmus, a nutritional deficiency that leads to severe wastage. “It’s hard to get food,” she says. “It’s not enough. It’s never enough.”
On a nearby bed, 30-year-old Saliwa Daoud sits fanning her little girl Islam with a pink and blue fan. Saliwa is from just across the border in Sudan and has only been in Chad for four months. Islam has lesions on her skin due to a disease called kwashiorkor that is caused by protein deficiency. She has lost her appetite and is crying in pain. What does Saliwa want for the future? “I want my baby to be well.”
At the official refugee camp Aboutengue – a settlement of about 40,000 people – a community meeting is taking place in the shade of a sycamore fig tree away from the dust and heat. Men and women are discussing the lack of food and water. The WFP rations run out quickly, they say. People try to supplement their income with casual work, but there is little employment in the area. A 66-year-old former educational administrator carefully writes the names of his dead children in my notebook. He talks about the deaths of two of his sons by shooting and the later death of his daughter. How did she die? “From not eating.”
Further aid cutbacks mean that more people, including small children, will die. In the Farchana camp, originally set up for the refugees of the Darfur crisis 20 years ago, a refugee teacher named Suad Uman Adum says she knows of three women who recently died due to lack of food.
A student at her school, 16-year-old Mosin Ibrahim, speaks about seeing his father shot in the head when the RSF raided his home. Mosin was later beaten unconscious with a Kalashnikov rifle at an RSF checkpoint.
Now, his main problem is hunger and thirst. And then, because he is still a child, Mosin and his friends start playing football with a ball made from rags and twine. What does he need? “Water, food.” He pauses. “And maybe you could get us some footballs?”
This reporting was facilitated by a grant from the Simon Cumbers Media Fund. Further reporting from east Chad will be published in the coming weeks.
