Breaking Point: UN Warns of Life-Threatening Aid Cuts for 1.3 Million Refugees in Chad Ahead of Paris Summit

More than a million Sudanese refugees currently sheltering in Chad face immediate and life-threatening cuts to essential services as international humanitarian funding dries up.

In a joint statement issued this Thursday, April 9, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that food, water, shelter, and healthcare will be drastically scaled back unless a combined $428 million funding gap is immediately closed.

As the conflict in neighboring Sudan enters its third year, Chad remains on the frontlines of the crisis, hosting 1.3 million Sudanese refugees. Over 900,000 of those individuals arrived after the war broke out in 2023. Today, one in three people in eastern Chad is a refugee, placing an immense, unsustainable strain on local resources.

A System Nearing Collapse

The scale of the funding shortfall has forced agencies into devastating operational reductions. According to the official UN brief, the UNHCR currently only has the resources to provide basic assistance to four out of every ten refugees.

"What we are seeing in eastern Chad is the human cost of funding shortfalls," stated Patrice Ahouansou, UNHCR Representative in Chad, in the official press release. "We ended last year with only around one-third of the resources needed to fully respond to the refugee emergency in the east."

The immediate fallout on the ground is severe:

• Food Security: The WFP has already been forced to halve food rations for the majority of the refugee population. Women and young children are absorbing the most severe impacts of the cuts.
• Shelter and Relocation: Critical shortages have left over 80,000 families without shelter. Furthermore, nearly 243,000 people remain stranded in highly vulnerable eastern border areas because agencies lack the funding to relocate them to safer settlements further inland.
• Infrastructure: Basic survival infrastructure is failing under the strain. In some settlements, refugees are receiving less than half of the minimum daily water requirement.

WFP Chad Country Director Sarah Gordon-Gibson explicitly warned that the severe lack of resources will force refugee populations into "devastating coping strategies and put lives at risk."

The Diplomatic Response: The Paris Conference

In direct response to this collapsing aid architecture, the international community is scrambling to mobilize capital. France, Germany, and the European Union have urgently convened an International Humanitarian Conference for Sudan and Neighbouring Countries, scheduled to take place in Paris on April 15.

The summit will bring together ministers, regional organizations, and major donors to secure the billions of dollars required to stabilize the region. However, international advocacy groups are already applying pressure, noting that pledges mean nothing if the capital is not deployed immediately.

For the 1.3 million refugees waiting in eastern Chad, the results of next week's conference will dictate whether the region can stabilize or if the displacement crisis will spiral into an unparalleled catastrophe of starvation and exposure.