Sudanese Refugees in Chad Receive Aid From the EU

The European Union (EU) will send 10 million euros to support Chad in humanitarian assistance to refugees from the Sudanese conflict. This is aimed at meeting the most urgent needs of these refugees in an extremely precarious situation in the camps set up by the Chadian authorities.

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The news was communicated to the President of Chad, Mahamat Idriss Déby, by the Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janes Lenarcic. The European Commission specified that the aid will mainly reach women and children, who represent the majority of the refugees, especially to mitigate the delicate situation of pregnant and breastfeeding women.

With this shipment, the EU will have allocated 18.6 million euros to refugees in Chad since the start of the war in Sudan. These funds are disbursed as an emergency measure, since Chad also receives aid to address its own humanitarian problems, which have amounted to 39.1 million this year.

By June, less than a month of having started the conflict in Sudan, the World Food Program (WFP) had already stepped up its aid, especially in the border area between the two countries. On April 15, a fierce confrontation broke out between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary forces Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

“People are running across the border, wounded and scared and only with their children in their hands and the clothes on their backs. They need security and humanitarian aid,” the WFP director in Chad, Pierre Honnorat, declared on that date. According to the organization, the tragedy was so severe that the program allocated everything it had in its reserves at the time to deal with the crisis.

Chad is a society with serious humanitarian problems, which have been increased by the migratory waves that have been reaching its borders since April. It is “extremely poor... if you don't live there and don't live that reality, you can't imagine it. You can watch documentaries on TV, but sometimes they seem like stories to you. There is a lot of hunger, I do not dare to speak there of three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, because it is an injustice when there are days when there is no food,” said Áurea Arcos, a Salesian missionary in Chad.

 “Women and children don’t have anything,” and “the youngest ones, even the 5-year-olds, have to take care of their younger siblings and have to work, going with the goat to fetch water or firewood for the kitchen," she adds in the same interview.

Aid from the EU, WFP and other international organizations is also going directly to Sudan to assist civilian victims of the conflict. As far as possible and according to the protection coverage of the members of these organizations, shipments of food and other basic products are destined, especially to the city of Darfur.

This city is where the conflict has been the bloodiest, however in its eastern, northern, southern and central areas, humanitarian aid has been delivered. Western Darfur area has been left more unprotected, as it has been exposed to inter-community clashes, resulting from the bloodier confrontation between the Army and the RSF.