(Libreville) More than 3.4 million people are in “urgent” need of a humanitarian response in Chad, according to Action Against Hunger (ACF), a consequence of the massive influx of refugees fleeing the war in Sudan and “underfunding”.
“3.4 million people are currently in a critical situation of food insecurity in Chad […] The host provinces of eastern Chad are among the very vulnerable areas of the country with poor access to basic services and the arrival of refugees drastically exacerbates needs,” the NGO writes in a press release.
Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world, is home to around 1.4 million internally displaced people or refugees due to conflicts within the country and its neighbors.
Before a new civil war broke out in Sudan in mid-April 2023, Chad was already sheltering, according to the UN, more than 400,000 refugees who fled the war which ravaged Darfur from 2003 to 2020. It now has Today there are nearly 900,000, 88% of whom are women and children.
Action Against Hunger warns of “the number of cases of severe acute malnutrition expected between October 2023 and September 2024 which amounts to 480,000 children”, an increase of 15%.
The NGO Doctors Without Borders was already concerned in November 2023 to see the rate of severe acute malnutrition among Sudanese refugee children reach 4.8% in certain refugee camps, or “double the emergency threshold determined by the Organization World Health Organization (WHO).
“It is urgent that donors guarantee sustainable funding for the humanitarian response,” according to Henri-Noël Tatangang, ACF director for Chad, who currently estimates funding for the response plan “at 4.5%.” ” only.
The NGO fears a deterioration in the humanitarian situation with “the arrival of the rainy season and the lean period”, which “will increase needs and at the same time make access to vulnerable populations much more complex over all the territory “.
In mid-February, transitional president Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno declared a “state of food and nutritional emergency” in the vast Central African state, without specifying future actions or the populations concerned.
The following month, the UN Food Program announced the suspension of food aid for the month of April “due to financial constraints” and launched an appeal to donors to avoid “a total catastrophe”.