ADRÉ – In what is probably the world’s biggest refugee camp, the desert town of Adré, Chad, the refugees from Sudan exhibit a remarkable sense of dignity. Next to some of the huts, they have built from branches and plastic sheeting, flowers grow neatly in beds surrounded by bricks.
There is hardly any rubbish on the muddy paths of the town. The people organize committees to clean the toilets, which are provided by aid organizations. People help one another. Anyone who has anything left from the far-too-small food rations shares it with the community — even if they are very hungry. That is what Sudanese culture dictates. And they have brought their culture with them to the neighboring country of Chad.
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Since the war between Sudan’s army and the Arab militia Rapid Support Forces (RSF) escalated 17 months ago, tens of thousands have been killed in the fighting. Some estimates put the number of deaths at as many as 150,000, if consequences such as crop failures and lack of medical care are included in the count.
It is simultaneously the largest humanitarian crisis and the largest refugee crisis in the world; 10 million people have been displaced, and 2 million have moved to the already fragile neighboring countries.
Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world, is bearing the greatest burden with 780,000 refugees. They live very close to the border. And crossing was, for many, the only chance of escaping the war. The RSF and allied Arab militias have been targeting them since the beginning of the war and are trying to use the conflict as an excuse to pursue an ethnic cleansing program.
No coverage, no support
In 2003, when Arab-influenced herders escalated their land conflict with black African farmers in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, an attempted genocide with hundreds of thousands of deaths, the world’s attention was focused on Darfur. But not this time. This crisis is not getting enough coverage, and the refugees are not getting enough political or humanitarian support.
Only five years ago, people were hoping for a success story in Sudan. The people demonstrated peacefully for months against dictator Omar al Bashir until he was deposed by the military. For a short time, the generals seemed to allow democratic progress and set up a kind of transitional government — only to dissolve it three years ago.
From then on, power was shared with the RSF, which had grown to the size of a parallel army. Then, in April 2023, negotiations between the official army and the RSF failed. Within hours, fighting broke out between the two in the major cities. To this date, neither side has gained a clear upper hand, and the international community tries to negotiate every few months. In vain.
1,100 calories a day
In the Adré camp, Huda, 35, asks to share her story. A war-torn nurse, her eyes teary, body bent, steps slow. She belongs to the Massalit, a black African ethnic group who work almost exclusively as small farmers in Darfur, an area larger than Germany.
She only arrived a few weeks ago with her husband and seven children. Registration is not yet complete, and there is no food. The family is dependent on the help of other refugees. “I thank God that I was able to leave the war,” she says, “but hunger is following us.
Rarely has a disaster of this magnitude received so little attention from the international community.
The United Nations World Food Programme has so few resources at its disposal that food rations in Adré recently had to be halved to 1,100 calories per day per person. In such crises, 2,000 calories are actually considered the minimum. Grain, pulses, oil and salt were most recently distributed in mid-August.
In Aboutengue, a refugee camp about a day’s walk away, residents report that they have not received a new monthly ration since July. Due to the logistical failure, the UN is now considering making cash payments to the refugees, but there are concerns that would overwhelm the market. That could also lead to increased prices for the local population, and thus to more potential conflict.
Donor countries are neglecting emergency aid, as this crisis is overshadowed by the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Only 40% of support measures for Sudan’s population are financially covered, according to the UN, and there are huge gaps in the provision of aid to refugees in the poor neighboring countries. Rarely has a disaster of this magnitude received so little attention from the international community.
Escaping to Chad
Unlike most refugees in Adré, Huda was not living in Darfur when the fighting began, but in Sudanese city of Omdurman, more than 1,000 kilometers away. She stayed there for almost a year and was heavily pregnant when a bomb hit the house next door and killed four children. At that moment, in the dust of the explosion, she and her husband decided to flee.
A few days later, her seventh child was born. He was very weak, but the family set off anyway. A neighbor squeezed them into his SUV. In the middle of the night, their 1,400-kilometer journey to the safe border with Chad began. The odyssey lasted three months. Two days after her escape from Omdurman, Huda’s car was ambushed by the RSF. They stole the gasoline and asked about her ethnicity.
Members of her Massalit ethnic group are often killed at such checkpoints, especially the men, many of whom fought against Arab RSF militias in alliance with the official army at the beginning of the war. Huda’s husband claimed they belonged to a different ethnic group, the Tama. He was lucky that no one in the patrol knew the Tama accent. Exposing the lie would have been his death sentence.
Overcrowded refugee camps
In one of the refugee camps in Chad, a Massalit man shows me some videos of RSF atrocities on his cell phone. There are triumphant men with machine guns, thousands fleeing in the background. Men are being murdered, the wounded are forced to dig their own graves, called “slaves” and then killed.
The refugee says: “These murderers shared this on their own Facebook accounts.” He hopes someone will bring them to justice. The International Criminal Court is investigating.
Adré is, officially, only a temporary hub.
Huda’s family survived on dates from the load of an overturned truck, got water and some food from passers-by, and was repeatedly caught up in the war. In August, they finally reached the border and found refuge in Chad. So now they are in Adré which is, officially, only a temporary hub. But even the supposedly better equipped camps in the interior of the country are completely overloaded.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, 216,000 people are now living here, many of them for over a year, and in catastrophic conditions. The organization, on the instructions of the authorities in Chad, is rigidly sticking to its rule that no permanent accommodation for refugees may be built within 30 kilometers of the borders of war-torn countries.
This is to prevent the conflict from spilling over into neighboring countries through attacks or recruitment. Accordingly, the UN agencies are refusing to distribute building materials for the camp. Adré is less than two kilometers from Darfur. The bombing raids that Sudan’s air force carries out every few weeks can be heard from here.
War economy
When Sudan’s army declared the RSF a terrorist organization earlier this year and for months banned all permits for aid deliveries to Darfur, it complied with international law. The UN recognizes Sudan’s generals, who seized power in a coup three years ago, as the official government of Sudan.
“The UN should have stepped out of its comfort zone in the face of this catastrophe,” says an experienced emergency worker. Another issue that is making it hard for Sudan’s refugees to get the help they need is that the UN diplomats with the most experience in dealing with crises are tied up by the wars in more prominent parts of the world.
For a few weeks now, some trucks carrying grain deliveries from the World Food Programme have been crossing the border into Sudan — before that, deliveries from the Red Sea were attempted, but these rarely reached their destination because of the fighting.
The barren Darfur region was one of the most difficult to reach areas in the world.
Even in peacetime, the barren Darfur region was one of the most difficult to reach areas in the world. Heavy rain and enormous floodings have left its muddy paths filled with furrows, and the journey now takes much longer than usual. In many places, you can only advance at walking pace, if at all. It takes a many hours’ drive to get to the first paved road.
The UN flights to the border, which are essential for emergency supplies, have to be canceled again and again: the flooding makes it impossible to land. In the meantime, the RSF refuses to let humanitarian aid cross the areas of Sudan that they occupy, under the pretext that weapons could be smuggled to the enemy together with the grains and medical supplies. The countless flatbed trucks that transport petrol to the RSF troops from Chad, however, are allowed through with no hesitation. War economy.
The cost of inaction
In Adre, Laura Leyser, the Austrian director of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), is struggling to keep her composure. She has just returned from Darfur and visited the university hospital in the town of El Geneina, which was the most important hospital in the region before the war — 80% of the health facilities have collapsed, El Geneina is one of the few that are still functioning. Sort of.
“It was a shocking sight. At the beginning of the war, everything was looted, even the power cables,” says Leyser. MSF is often the only aid organization on site in Darfur. They also run a children’s ward under extremely difficult conditions. In the hospital wards that are run by the local authorities, employees have not received a salary for 16 months. They continue to work, but many patients can no longer be treated.
Every day of inaction costs many lives.
“There is a lack of water and electricity,” says Leyser, “we have restored supplies, but the price of fuel has skyrocketed.” The international community must do much more: “Every day of inaction costs many lives.”
Anyone who speaks to the women from El Geneina who have fled to Chad will hear stories of unimaginable suffering: relatives and friends being killed in droves, mass raping. The martyrdom continues for Huda, too.
She is concerned for her young son’s health: He survived the escape, but in Adré the doctors diagnosed him with a hole in his heart (an Atrial Septal Defect). Without surgery, he might have six months left, maybe seven. Her baby’s sick heart is making hers sick, too: She lost her home, she hopes she won’t lose her child.
