The Guardian: Sudanese Women Left to Survive Alone in Chad’s Desert Camps
Sudan Events – Agencies
As the war in Sudan rages on and drives more people across the border, malnutrition rates are soaring in remote camps in Chad, where women and children make up 86% of refugees.
This was reported by The Guardian correspondent Kamil Ahmed from the border town of Metche, along the Sudan–Chad frontier.
In his detailed account of the plight of Sudanese refugees—most of them women and children—Ahmed recounts the ordeal of 18-year-old Makka Ibrahim Mohamed, who clung to her seat for hours as the ambulance jolted along the muddy road to the hospital. She was in labor, suffering excruciating pain after her uterus ruptured, as the vehicle bounced through potholes and dips across the Chadian desert.
Most Sudanese refugees who fled to Chad since 2023 now endure this harsh reality, living on the edge of survival—mostly women.
Deadly Distances
These refugees live in isolated desert camps where food and water are scarce, jobs nonexistent, and medical help lies hours away—sometimes too far to save lives.
The hospital Makka needed, run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), was located in Metche, one of several camps in eastern Chad, more than two hours away by car.
“I used to get infections constantly during my pregnancy,” Makka said. “I went to the clinic seven times. When labor started, I couldn’t give birth naturally because my uterus collapsed. I waited two hours for the ambulance. All I remember is the pain—it was unbearable. I passed out.”
Her mother, Aisha Khamis Abdallah, 40, feared losing both her daughter and grandchild. But Makka was rushed into surgery upon arrival, and an emergency cesarean saved both her life and that of her baby, Mois.
A Growing Threat
Even before the current refugee influx, Chad had the world’s second-highest maternal mortality rate. The arrival of Sudanese women has only deepened the crisis.
At the MSF hospital in Metche, where 824 babies have been delivered this year—most in emergencies—doctors save many, but they worry deeply about those who never make it in time.
Since Sudan’s civil war erupted two years ago, women and children have comprised 86% of the refugees reaching Chad. Eastern Chad now hosts around 1.2 million Sudanese, including 400,000 displaced by earlier violence in Darfur.
Many men stayed behind to protect their homes and land; others were killed, captured, or forced to fight. Those still able to work leave the barren camps in search of opportunities in N’Djamena or neighboring Libya.
Women Left Alone
That leaves women on their own—struggling to feed their children and care for the elderly. To reduce overcrowding near the border, the Chadian government relocated refugees to smaller camps like Metche, each hosting around 50,000 people, but in remote areas lacking services or opportunities.
In Metche, MSF’s hospital began as a cluster of tents and expanded to include a single operating room—little else.
There are no jobs. Families walk for hours to gather firewood. Each person survives on just nine liters of water a day—less than half the globally recommended minimum of 20 liters.
This isolation means that hospitals receive women in critical, often fatal, condition. Only one ambulance connects Metche’s hospital to the nearest clinic in Alacha camp, home to another 50,000 refugees including Makka’s family.
MSF teams have documented women in agonizing labor waiting all night for the ambulance to arrive, its journey slowed by flooded wadis and impassable muddy roads during the rainy season.
Every Birth an Emergency
“Almost every case we see is an emergency,” said Dr. Alejandra Kripovic, a surgeon at the MSF hospital in Metche. “Some women walk for hours or ride donkeys to reach us. Imagine being nine months pregnant, in labor, traveling for hours in a donkey cart. Delay is deadly—but the suffering itself takes a toll.”
Worsening malnutrition adds to the risk of complications, including uterine rupture—now a grimly familiar diagnosis for MSF staff.
After her C-section, Makka remained hospitalized for two months, weakened by infection and malnutrition. Her husband had left to look for work, leaving her dependent on her mother.
Children and Malnutrition
The malnutrition ward has expanded to six tents, now overflowing. Children lie beneath mosquito nets in the sweltering heat, while medical staff prepare treatments and weigh infants with improvised scales made of buckets and rope.
Mild cases receive packets of peanut-based therapeutic paste; severe ones are treated with fortified milk. Makka’s baby is fed through a syringe.
Nearby, Suhaiba Abdallah Abubakar’s 11-month-old son, Sufyan Suleiman, is fed through a nasal tube. He had been sick all year, but local clinics only gave him painkillers until Suhaiba made the difficult journey from Alacha to Metche.
“Every day I see more children arriving in this tent,” she said. “The food we get is poor, it’s not enough, and it has no nutrients.
If we were home, we could cope. You can farm or work. Here, we depend entirely on what they give us.”
What they receive is a small ration of sorghum, oil, and salt—distributed every two months. It’s nutritionally deficient, and the little cash they’re given can’t buy much at the overpriced weekly market.
Fleeing from El Geneina
Suhaiba fled to Chad in 2023 after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacked El Geneina that June. With no jobs in Chad, her husband left for Libya, hoping to earn enough for the family to join him. She now lives with her in-laws, sharing whatever food they have.
But she says rations are already shrinking. Cuts in international aid budgets—from the US, UK, and several European countries—threaten to make things even worse.
Though Sudan’s war has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century, UN agencies in Chad received only 69% of the funding needed in 2024.
The World Food Programme warned in June that food rations could be reduced further without new funding.
Every Woman Has a Story
In Metche, a group of Sudanese women gather under a tree. Among them is 65-year-old Azza Dahiya Osman, weaving dry palm leaves into simple handicrafts to sell at the market. Others sell peanuts or work for local farmers—sometimes without pay.
Each has her own story of pain. One woman lost her baby after clinics refused to admit her during labor.
Osman, who suffers from high blood pressure, said chronic illness is only treated when it becomes life-threatening:
“Do I have to die to get medicine? I kept searching for help and couldn’t even find the drugs I need.”
Fear for El Fasher
Osman fled Sudan two years ago after the RSF stormed El Geneina—the first city in Darfur to fall. Now, people in Metche fear that El Fasher, the last city resisting RSF control, will be next.
The RSF claims to fight a Sudanese government that has long ignored the marginalized, but Osman responds bitterly:
“They are liars. They are the ones who killed us. We can never live under their rule.”
RSF dominance in Darfur and its creation of a parallel administration mean refugees in Chad have no path home. Opportunities are scarce—young men work in brick factories or gold mines in northern Chad, or migrate further in search of better chances.
Lives in Limbo
Among them is 21-year-old Afaf Abdelmalek, once living comfortably and employed by the government in El Fasher before her brother-in-law was executed by RSF fighters during their failed assault on the city in 2023.
Her elder brother and sister remain in Sudan; she hasn’t heard from them since and doesn’t know if they are alive. Her days now revolve around survival—fetching water and firewood with her elderly mother, sister, and young niece.
There are no schools for the little girl, still traumatized after witnessing her father’s killing.
The UN refugee agency warns that shrinking budgets could cut secondary education programs, leaving 155,000 children out of school next year.
The child freezes with fear whenever she sees a man on a motorcycle—the image recalling the RSF raids that once terrorized their neighborhood.
Afaf said, “We can’t forget what we saw. My niece still trembles if she sees a man on a motorbike.”
Holding on to the Past
Despite everything, Afaf tries to nurture a trace of joy. Her family’s shelter is surrounded by a small garden of vegetables and flowers—reminders of a once-prosperous Sudan of lemon and pomegranate trees.
Unable to buy seeds, she collects plant cuttings from the roadside and replants them at home, waiting for the rains to bring them back to life.
“Sometimes in the morning,” she said, “I drink tea standing in the garden. It gives me a moment of peace—reminds me of life before the war, makes me forget everything for a while. For a moment, I feel that maybe, someday, things will be all right.”
Adapted from The Guardian
