‘People Are Hopeless Here’: Sudan’s Sick, Starving and Injured Spill Into Camps Across Its Borders
Tom Nicholson The Telegraph
Displaced persons, mostly women and children, in North Darfur, Sudan. (photo: Hamid Abdulsalam/UNAMID)
Twenty years on from the Darfur genocide, history is repeating itself in this region of east Africa
In this region of east Africa, 20 years on from the Darfur genocide of 2003, history is repeating itself. In the border town of Adré, just 5km from the border, the crisis is reaching a tipping point. In just over a year, the population has increased sixfold. What was a small community of traders now hosts 240,000 people, the majority living in temporary shelters.
After crossing the border, the refugees start their new lives in temporary, unofficial camps, salvaging sticks and plastic sheets for shelter. They face limited access to food, and little to no chance of finding work. Overcrowding, deteriorating sanitary conditions, and security concerns hinder the speed that people can be processed and moved to longer-term accommodation.
Those who have escaped conflict arrive with physical injuries as well as psychological trauma, the victims of widespread indiscriminate violence at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The paramilitary group, led by Mohamed “Hemedti” Hamdan Dagalo, is forged from colloquially named “Janjaweed” militias, who were accused of genocide and war crimes against the non-Arab populations in West Darfur in 2003.
The RSF has been fighting a devastating civil war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April last year, with civilians being targeted frequently. Thousands arrive in Chad with bullet wounds to the legs, a trademark characteristic of RSF violence.
The most severely wounded are given urgent treatment in the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF – Doctors Without Borders) field hospital, but aftercare is limited. Once discharged, patients urgently need prostheses, mobility aids, physiotherapy, and psychosocial support. They rely on the help of other NGOs such as Humanity … Inclusion, the only organisation providing physical rehabilitation in east Chad.
Djadah Ali Ismail, 44, from Al-Madaris, in West Darfur was shot in the upper right leg when the RSF stormed her family home. The militants killed her family of ten, shooting her husband in the head in front of her. Djadah, with her baby on her back, survived, and was carried in a wheelbarrow to the border.
The severity of her injuries mean she now has to walk with two walking sticks. But Djadah is grateful: “thanks to physical rehabilitation, HI has taught me how to move again. Just something as simple as saying ‘hello’ to my neighbours has changed my life, when I used to stay at home every day.”
Djawahir Abdrahman’s dreams of being an accountant were “smashed” when the RSF launched a rocket-propelled grenade into her house whilst she was drinking tea at breakfast with her daughter. The explosion caused her to have hemiplegia – a paralysis down the right hand side of her body. Thanks to regular strength and conditioning sessions she’s closer to achieving her new dream: to be able to walk unaided.
Mental trauma is widespread amongst the displaced. After she was shot in the leg and chest by the RSF, Haleema Mohammad Ibrahim Abdullah attended HI mental health awareness sessions, a vital support alongside physical strength and conditioning. With her neighbours often physically unable or too traumatised to attend physiotherapy or psychosocial support sessions, she now uses her experience and knowledge from the sessions to help other refugees cope with the impact of conflict.
But not everyone is getting the help they need. In one small corner of the informal camp in Adré, there are four disabled people living without any specialist help. One of them, Nasser Bashir Mohammed Ishaq, 40, has lived there for six months. He depends on a wooden stick he bought from the market in order to walk, which needs replacing.
Nasser discusses the difficulties he and his friends face being disabled in the camp, saying: “We can’t go to the market on foot. If we go, we have to pay for a donkey and cart that we can’t afford. So we discuss how we can help each other move around, and we plan to shop for each other too”. The group desperately need to upgrade their rudimentary mobility aids, but due to bureaucracy regarding authorisations and budget restrictions, humanitarian organisations are unable to run their much needed programmes in the temporary, unofficial camps.
Humanitarian organisations are doing all they can to respond to the huge number of new arrivals, but with the global focus on Ukraine the Middle East, they are grossly underfunded. According to real time funding tracking by the UNCHR, the inter-agency refugee response plan (including other UN agencies and NGOs) in Chad is only 25 per cent funded, leaving a shortfall of $472.25 million USD.
Food is scarce in the Adré camp, and those without official refugee status rely almost exclusively on handouts. Every day, hundreds of new arrivals gather outside a courtyard where an NGO is preparing cooked lentils. Nearby, mothers place their bowls in an orderly queue whilst seeking shade under a tree. Their children wait hopefully for a second helping of food on the opposite side of the courtyard, crammed together whilst being shouted at by a man with a whip.
every day, so sometimes we don’t get any food at all”.
Tensions over access to food have risen in recent weeks, with hunger and boredom causing rifts between those waiting. Mariam Adam Haroun Ibrahim, 53 from Maku described being beaten as she queued. She has since managed to find work on a farm, but said: “it’s not enough money. I can afford half a bowl of sorghum with a day’s wages”. Last month, refugees held a demonstration outside of the camp, complaining they had only received humanitarian assistance once in the last three months.
Work opportunities can be as hard to find as food. Many refugees from Geneina – the capital of West Darfur – lost their farms and trade following looting by the RSF, and have minimal prospective work in Chad. Income and opportunities to start businesses are in short supply, with Chad ranking as one of the world’s 15 poorest countries in terms of GDP, and one of the top 5 poorest countries in terms of the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI).
Following the murder of her husband at the hands of the RSF last year, Zainab Adam Osman, 30, became the sole income provider for her family. In August, she started a job moving bricks from a furnace in the Adré camp. She works eight hours a day with her seven month old son Azayn Abdul Aziz wrapped securely on her back, who is too young to be left at home. Zainab is paid 200 CFA per day, (the equivalent of £0.26 GBP per day) for her labour. It’s “extremely hard work” she says, but still has aspirations for her children. “Education is the future. But right now, I need food for my kids.”
To ease the pressure on Adré, some 5000 refugees have been relocated to larger, more substantial camps in Aboutengué and Farchana, around 40km and 50km from the border respectively. Farchana serves as a stark reminder of recent history, with countless families still living in a camp set up as a result of the 2003 conflict.
Disabled families are filling up one section of the new camp, nicknamed “bones” in Arabic, due to the number of injuries sustained at the hands of the RSF. The President of the new refugee camp, Hatim Abdullah Al Fadil, said: “People are relying mainly on humanitarian assistance, because there is no other alternative income… no working opportunities here in this area in particular. Even if you are ready to work, you will not find the work and there is no jobs. So people are jobless and hopeless here in Farchana.”
The situation is made more complicated by the closure of the Adré border, which only reopened on 15 August after a six months closure when no aid was allowed through. Allegations from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) that the crossing was used for weapons delivery were backed by the UN, who found the claims “credible”.
Whilst recognising the reopening of the Adré border crossing as “an important step”, Ambassador James Kariuki, the UK Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, earlier this month called for humanitarian access to be “scaled up – both cross-border and across conflict lines.”
Despite the UN Security Council having been briefed six times on the “worrisome developments” in the region, Joyce Msuya, Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator to the United Nations Security Council, sees last week’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting as an “unmissable opportunity to bring an end to this conflict, and demonstrate our solidarity with the people of Sudan”.
For Djadah, Haleema, Nasser and the thousands that continue to flee Sudan, a solution to this crisis cannot come soon enough.
But the figures show no sign of diminishing: an average of 630 people arrived in Adré every day in June. With the end of the rainy season approaching, and reports of a full-scale RSF assault on Al Fashir in North Darfur, the number of new arrivals is set to increase. Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General is "gravely alarmed" by the reports and called on the RSF leader to stop the attack immediately, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Saturday.
More than 10 million people have been internally displaced in Sudan according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) , and the Chadian government have predicted the number of arrivals to Chad could rise to 910,000 by the end of 2024.
