Crisis in Sudan: A deeper look
On April 15, 2023, after years of turmoil, fighting broke out in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum, and the crisis quickly escalated, leading to what is currently the largest displacement of people in the world. Ten million Sudanese people are internally displaced. Another 2 million have fled the country.
In Sudan, banking and healthcare systems have virtually collapsed. Conflict has made farming impossible, leading to widespread hunger. “This is the worst hunger crisis that has ever been recorded in Sudan, and the situation is dire,” says John Makoni, World Vision’s national director in Sudan. UNICEF warns that over 730,000 children under 5 are now at risk of dying. Funding for humanitarian assistance is urgently needed to help save lives.
Fleeing to Chad
Since April 2023, more than 560,000 people have crossed into Chad, many traversing the sandy corridor between El Geneina in Sudan and Adré, a town on the border of Chad. El Geneina means garden in Arabic, but with so many residents fleeing, some say the garden town has become a ghost town.
Long lines of people move together toward the border, some with children on their backs, some riding on donkeys, and a few traveling by car. There are reports that they were stopped at multiple checkpoints along the way.
Every person who made the journey saw things they never wanted to see.
These are the stories of three people from El Geneina whose lives were turned upside down when the fighting surged in Sudan last year: Adoum, 5, Rachida, 8, and Abdulrashid, 37.
Adoum is too hungry to play. Rachida saw her parents’ dead bodies. Abdulrashid, a father of four, lost everything he owned.
Adoum
For Adoum and his family, who abandoned their house because of the war, the journey to Chad was terrifying.
Adoum couldn’t stop crying. “I asked him to stop crying,” says Kaltoum, Adoum’s mother. “When he cried, I was afraid.” Her fears were well-founded. Kaltoum did not want to attract attention. People endured beatings as they made their escape.
Along the way, the mother and her three children — Adoum, Mariam, 3, and Yahia, 10 — passed the bodies of people killed in the fighting. “I have seen four dead bodies. They weren’t soldiers,” Kaltoum says. She was worried about her son. “I covered his head on my back so he wouldn’t see.”
In the confusion of the journey, Kaltoum, Adoum, and Mariam were separated from the eldest sister, Yahia. Kaltoum, a widow who had already lost two children before the crisis, thought she’d lost another child.
As they fled from Sudan, Kaltoum covered her son Adoum's eyes so he wouldn’t see the dead bodies they had to pass.
As they fled from Sudan, Kaltoum covered her son Adoum's eyes so he wouldn’t see the dead bodies they had to pass.
Rachida
Rachida’s family — the ones who survived — ran for their lives.
“We were sitting at home,” says Rachida’s aunt Halime, sitting close to her sister Gamara. “[Armed militants] knocked. They said, ‘Get out.’ They started beating us.” Gamara was beaten with an electric cable.
“We started running away,” she says. “We ran barefoot. We walked to Adré, our feet swelling.”
They took Rachida with them. Everyone in Rachida’s immediate family had been killed. “She saw the bodies of her father and mother,” says her aunt Halime. Rachida’s older brothers were taking care of their sick grandfather when they heard the gunfire. They took him to the mosque where they thought they’d be safe. But instead, Halime says, militants “took him out of the mosque and shot him.” Then they killed the boys.
The family’s trip from their home in El Geneina to Adré was nightmarish. When they came to a gully, they stopped, thirsty. “We saw bodies in the water, but we had to drink it anyway,” says Rachida.
Abdulrashid
“When the war started, I was at the hospital,” says Abdulrashid. It was supposed to be a time of joy. He was waiting for his twins to be born.
When the bullets started flying, Abdulrashid, his wife, and their four children — including the newborn twins — fled. Eleven of his neighbors had already been killed. Abdulrashid’s family’s belongings were taken. “I had two cars,” he says. “They stole one and wrecked the other. They took all that we had.”
The family traveled in the darkness. “Only at night could you escape,” he says. “In the day you couldn’t. I saw many dead on the street. Many people were injured. They destroyed the hospitals.”
After all her family members were killed, Rachida’s aunts Gamara (pictured right) and Halime protected her and brought her with them as they escaped to Chad.
After all her family members were killed, Rachida’s aunts Gamara (pictured right) and Halime protected her and brought her with them as they escaped to Chad.
Abdulrashid and his family traveled only at nighttime as they escaped from Sudan.
Abdulrashid and his family traveled only at nighttime as they escaped from Sudan.
The bridge at Adré
Adoum, Rachida, and Abdulrashid each crossed with their families from Sudan to Chad. Marking the border at Adré is a short bridge that was left unfinished when construction funds ran out. And so refugees wait under the concrete bridge that feels like a bridge to nowhere.
Under the bridge, two staff from Chad’s refugee agency record family information from newcomers on an iPad and transfer the data to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. The UNHCR then issues the refugees a registration card so that they can stay in Chad.
A voice over a bullhorn bellows for people to be quiet. But the noise prevails. People sit on the sand, waiting their turn. Picking one’s way through the crowd under the bridge, it is hard not to step on people. They are everywhere, hot, sweaty, and afraid.
The spontaneous settlement
After registering under the bridge at Adré, Adoum, Rachida, Abdulrashid, and their families each walked nearly 4 miles to the spontaneous settlement — a sprawling sandy mass of refugees that has grown to 175,000 people.
At the spontaneous settlement, there is little to do but wait. Families wait here, often for months — sometimes more than a year — to be resettled to a camp in Chad. There is not enough room in the existing camps to accommodate new people.
In the meantime, each family builds a small home of sorts, a shelter constructed simply using what they can find, usually branches and clothing. The families rely on food from the World Food Programme. The UNHCR has provided bathrooms and water, but there are always long lines for both.
In the spontaneous settlement, Kaltoum created a small hut from sticks for herself and her son, Adoum.
In the spontaneous settlement, Kaltoum created a small hut from sticks for herself and her son, Adoum.
Adoum
Once at the spontaneous settlement, Adoum’s mother created a small hut from sticks for her family. Ten days later, they experienced a miracle. Her missing daughter, Yahia, was found, alive. After getting lost during the escape, she’d made it to Adré. “I took and I held her,” Kaltoum says. “I cried.”
The family has lost so much. Kaltoum’s husband died three years ago. Now she’s worried about Adoum, who weighs only 26 pounds, about half the weight of some healthy 5-year-olds.
His ribs show through his thin chest, and he has an infection in his tooth or jaw, the pain contributing to his weight loss.
“He was fat and normal,” she says, as Adoum lays in her lap, too hungry to move.
Rachida
Rachida and her family arrived at Adré in June 2023 as the rainy season began.
“We slept in a school compound,” says her aunt Halime. “We collected pieces of wood and covered them with our clothes.” It was a difficult time.
“We were totally dependent,” Halime says. “We had no food. We just sat under the shelter in the rain until it stopped.”
Abdulrashid
Abdulrashid arrived in Adré concerned about his newborn twins. They were so sick.
“We went to the hospital,” he says. “We met the doctors there. They looked [after] my children and gave them the medicine.”
After a week, because of the twins’ ill health, the family was transferred to Farchana camp.
Farchana camp and the challenges in Chad
Farchana camp is about 18 miles from the border crossing at Adré. It’s home to a large population of Sudanese refugees, most from Darfur in western Sudan. The first camp opened on January 17, 2004, when violence in Darfur began, ultimately taking the lives of at least 200,000 people and driving more than 2 million from their homes. Since then, there have been two extensions to Farchana camp as refugees flood in, most recently in the fall of 2023. Living conditions are harsh, with food and water hard to come by.
Though serving as a haven of refuge for the Sudanese, Chad has many challenges. The country already has one of the highest levels of hunger in the world. Food prices have soared, making it difficult for Chadian families to buy nutritious food. Refugees live on land that would have been used by local families for farming.
At the nutrition center, severely malnourished toddlers fight for their lives.
At the nutrition center, severely malnourished toddlers fight for their lives.
Adoum
Back at the spontaneous settlement in Adré, Adoum’s mother has food for only four more days — a liter of oil, salt, a cup of okra, millet, and some flour. She has watched people in the camp take desperate measures for food. They find an anthill to dig up and pull out the millet the ants have stored there.
Kaltoum is stuck in Adré. “Because Adoum is sick, I can’t go to work.” She worries for her son, who used to fly kites with the other boys in the settlement. Now he sits on his mother’s lap, his big, brown eyes vacant.
World Vision staff check on the family, helping Kaltoum with medical costs.
She has no idea when they will be transferred to a camp like Farchana or Metché.
Rachida
Rachida and her family were transferred to Metché camp after four miserable months in Adré. The journey to Metché, which is just 25 miles from Adré, is a 90-minute bumpy drive on sand. In eastern Chad, there is very little infrastructure and few roads.
Nearly 150,000 people live in the camp, which opened in August 2023. Some of them, like Rachida and her family, live in shelters provided by donors through World Vision’s Gift Catalog, which features a variety of life-changing gifts for people in need.
On a sweltering day in Metché — more than 100 degrees — it is much cooler inside the house than outside. “I got a very good house,” says Gamara. “Before, I was sleeping under a shelter. We suffered a lot. We are very grateful. We were living in the wilderness.”
Rachida was delighted when she saw the shelter where she now lives with her aunt Gamara. Aunt Halime and the rest of the family live nearby. “I was very happy. I can protect myself from the wind and rain,” she says. Her aunts protect her, too. “I love them,” she says.
Abdulrashid
Last October, the university-educated Abdulrashid interviewed and was selected as the school director in Farchana camp. He loves his work. “I feel excited. We are lucky. Some of the camps don’t have school[s] yet.”
He believes that education will create a better world. “If you want to live in peace we must educate our children,” he says. “It can open many chances for the world.”
Abdulrashid doesn’t have school supplies. There are only 17 teachers — all refugees themselves — and 10 chairs. “If I had more trees I’d have more students,” he jokes.
He can laugh again. The twins, Sami and Sama, a boy and a girl, are doing well.
World Vision’s response
The Sudan crisis is seemingly forgotten by most of the world, and the response is grossly underfunded.
But World Vision is one of the largest humanitarian agencies in Sudan, having worked there for decades. Since the conflict began in 2023, we have reached more than 1.8 million people, mostly women and children, with emergency assistance, including health and nutrition services and water, sanitation, and hygiene solutions.
World Vision is also working in Chad, including at the school where Abdulrashid is the director — home to one of 69 feeding programs in four camps serving 70,000 children this year. Emergency feeding programs bring children back to school. They come for the food, and they stay to learn.
World Vision’s Gilbert Ngah helps run the program with food that is supplied monthly by the World Food Programme. “We track the information and have trained committees in charge of school feeding,” he says. “The director of the school and the PTA are trained on how to handle food. We also identify cooks. They volunteer. They are trained on hygiene.
“The cooks start at 6 a.m. The children eat at 9:30. World Vision purchases them a plate and a cup. We also purchased the cooking pots.” Thermal pots help cook the food more quickly and conserve firewood.
The children at Abdulrashid’s school eating heaping plates of rice and beans is evidence that in the middle of the world’s largest displacement crisis, there is hope.
Along with the school feeding programs in Chad and the shelters supplied through World Vision’s Gift Catalog, World Vision built four Child-Friendly Spaces in camps where children can go to play, learn, and just be kids.
We also help find families for children who arrive in Chad unaccompanied. In Milé camp in eastern Chad, where 311 children have arrived without parents, World Vision staff have helped reunite 25 children with relatives. The other children are staying with loving host families. World Vision supports 10 host families in Milé camp and another 10 host families in a nearby camp, Konoungou, who take children in and care for them.
World Vision is working in other countries that border Sudan as well.
In South Sudan, we’re reaching people through our programs focused on health and nutrition; water, sanitation, and hygiene; and food and cash assistance.
In the Central African Republic, we’re supporting children through child protection interventions, including Child-Friendly Spaces, as well as water, sanitation, and hygiene programs. We’ve distributed mosquito nets and equipped 2,000 households hosting refugees with latrines and hygiene kits.
For nearly 75 years, World Vision has been committed to caring for children like Adoum and Rachida and families like Abdulrashid’s. The crisis in Sudan demands we increase our efforts. Now is not the time to look away.
Story published on October 23, 2024
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