Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees in Chad lack basic aid after a UN-led response plan received only 30% of the necessary funding in 2024, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Wednesday.
The war in Sudan between the army and its paramilitary rivals has killed thousands of people and uprooted more than 12 million, forcing Sudanese refugees across the border into Chad, along with Chadian returnees previously displaced from their country by a militant insurgency.
"This is without a doubt the world's largest humanitarian crisis and it does not stop at Sudan's borders," NRC Country Director Dermot Hegarty told AFP.
"There needs to be an upscaling of regional funding mechanisms."
Nearly one million people flee to Chad
In a statement on Wednesday, the NRC said that 23 international humanitarian organisations operating in eastern Chad had warned that the majority of refugees and returnees "do not have access to the protection and education assistance they direly need."
"Food assistance fell drastically short of covering their daily needs... (while) the protection and education sectors featured the largest gaps of the emergency response," the statement said.
The $630 million refugee response plan for Chad, developed by the UN in consultation with international NGOs, represents the amount that the UN refugee agency estimates is needed to respond to basic needs.
In its statement, the NRC said that nearly one million people have fled into Chad, including more than 720,000 Sudanese refugees and more than 220,000 returning Chadians.
'Great deal of trauma'
Nine out of 10 are women and children, the NRC said, adding that more than two-thirds of those arriving in Chad have endured some form of violence, including torture, rape and sexual slavery.
"Most refugees cross the border with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and an abundance of harrowing stories," said Alix Camus, president of a forum of NGOs cooperating with the NRC and country director of Acted, which offers assistance to refugees at a transit site in Adre, near the border.
Camus added that many refugees "have to cope with a great deal of trauma", saying greater focus should be placed on child protection, education, mental health, and the treatment and prevention of sexual and gender-based violence.
"Yet, faced with an emergency crisis of this magnitude on the one hand, and scraps of funding on the other, that type of assistance is placed on the backburner," Camus said.
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