Aid and Development Archive

N’DJAMENA, Chad — They usually come at night, to the sprawling refugee camps in eastern Chad along the border with Sudan. Recruiters for Chad-based rebel groups, which are locked in bloody combat with Khartoum and its militia proxies in Sudan’s Darfur region, sometimes simply show up at the camps and new recruits, many of them still boys, come to them voluntarily. But when there’s a shortage of volunteers, the recruiters might resort to force, according to aid workers in eastern Chad. The aid workers, who spoke to World Politics Review on conditions of anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the […]

GORE, Chad — The U.N.’s main refugee agency is expanding its work in southern Chad, adding programs for impoverished local villagers in order to head off conflict between locals and a growing population of Central African refugees. The programs, administered by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and partner aid groups, include aid to farmers and herders. The idea, according to Serge Male, UNHCR’s representative to Chad, is to ensure that the local population never have less than the refugees they host. “We cannot provide more to refugees if the local population does not benefit to some extent,” Male told […]

IRIBA, Chad — Four years after some quarter-million people fled ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s Darfur province for the relative safety of eastern Chad, one of the world’s most persistent humanitarian crises shows no signs of letting up. Indeed, there are signs that Darfuri refugees are in Chad to stay, despite acute shortages of water, firewood and food. Today the Darfuri refugees are housed in a dozen U.N.-administered camps that, over time, have become more like permanent towns and less like the squalid tent cities of popular conception. But appearances can be deceiving: Despite seeming self-sufficient on the surface, the camps […]