As war rages inside Sudan and the humanitarian aid network nears collapse, millions of refugees both inside the country and in neighbouring nations are losing hope they will ever be able to return home safely.
Instead, they fight for survival in isolated refugee camps, which are bursting at the seams.
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which → rag → seams
The Independent visited four Sudanese refugee camps in eastern Chad, where more than one million Sudanese refugees currently reside in isolated desert camps.
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refugees → visit → camps
Inside a 6m² shelter in the Goudrane Camp in Chad, a baby born in the battle for the city of El Fasher in western Sudan, wriggles on the carpet.
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baby → bear → carpet
Inside the tarpaulin walls, his mother, Maymauna, 27, cushions the back of her son’s head.
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mother → cushion → head
For a moment, his crying stops.
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crying → stop → moment
Then, as she slides her hand down past the nape of his neck, the boy’s head lolls backwards.
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head → slide → neck
“Please tell me why his body stopped working,” Maymauna pleads, sweat covering her brow.
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sweat → tell → brow
Maymauna tells The Independent that her son, Mayamat, lost the motor neurone skills learnt at five months old when artillery shelling pummelled his family’s home in the city.
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shelling → tell → city
“After the bombs hit our neighbourhood, his body just went limp,” she says.
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she → hit → neighbourhood
“And here, there is nobody who can help us.”
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who → be → us
In eastern Chad, 87 per cent of Sudanese refugees are women and children and most live together in dismal, desert shelters like Maymauna’s family.
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most → live → family
During interviews with dozens of survivors across the region, all had lost relatives to the war.
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all → lose → war
Many say they bore witness to public executions and the burning of civilians, both alive and dead.
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they → say → civilians
Many say relatives were victims of rape and torture at the hands of the rebel militia group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) who have been wrestling for control of Sudan with the Sudanese Armed Forces since April 2023.
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who → say → April
The paramilitary group has denied responsibility and blames the violence on local militias.
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group → deny → militias
The type of violence described to The Independent was deliberate and humiliating.
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type → describe → Independent
Common in many of accounts of harrowing town and village captures was a psychological component to the attacks; a mental trauma inflicted on all witnesses by the public nature of hideous executions and beatings of men and boys, and the widespread and sometimes repeated rape of women and girls.
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component → inflict → women
Families also recount how they were specifically targeted and massacred by RSF soldiers, a predominantly Arab group, because they were members of the Masalit tribe, one of the largest ethnic African tribes in western Sudan before the war.
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they → recount → war
Human rights investigators have since called attacks initiated by the RSF and allied Arab militias examples of ethnic cleansing, while the United Nations found ‘hallmarks of genocide’ in El Fasher.
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Nations → call → Fasher
The US has also accused the RSF of committing genocide against Darfur's non-Arabic population.
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US → accuse → population
The RSF has sought to deny all such allegations.
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RSF → seek → allegations
The scale and nature of the violence, and the shocking lack of humanitarian aid means the current situation in Sudan is widely known as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
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situation → mean → crisis
For many of the survivors, their suffering has followed them to Chad.
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suffering → follow → Chad
In Chad’s Touloum refugee camp, about 20 miles away from the Goudrane Camp, young refugee mothers who struggle with access to clean water are facing an impossible choice.
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who → struggle → choice
“Last month, three mothers buried their children, who had little chance of survival, alive in the sand,” the president of the Camp, Sheikh Abdul Aham says.
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president → bury → Camp
“For them, suffocation stops the slower, more painful death from thirst and starvation.”
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suffocation → stop → thirst
Both camps, which together host almost 100,000 Sudanese refugees are located in the sparse desert region of Wadi Fira in eastern Chad, which is the one of the poorest in the country and faces extreme water scarcity, especially in summer, when temperatures soar to 45°C.
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temperatures → host → C
Most days, Touloum camp resident, Hawa Idriss Adan, 66, waits alone in her shelter for her daughter to arrive with water.
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daughter → wait → water
As her family fled the siege of El Fasher, Hawa was hit by a car.
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Hawa → flee → car
Since then, she has not been able to walk unaided, which makes it impossible for her to reach the nearest water distribution point 30-minutes away by foot.
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her → walk → foot
Whilst Hawa waits for water, she wonders where her grandson is.
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grandson → wait → water
Two years ago, during a violent attack on her neighbourhood by RSF and allied militia fighters, he vanished.
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he → ally → RSF
An investigation by Reuters earlier this year, alleged that the RSF kidnapped young children to be used as slaves, specifically in El Fasher.
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RSF → allege → Fasher
The RSF has also sought to deny this.
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RSF → seek → this
As water sources run low in the camps and refugee populations increase, the French NGO, Solidarités International, is racing against the clock to build urgent infrastructure to improve water access in overwhelmed refugee camps across the east of Chad.
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NGO → run → Chad
But last month, despite digging more than 128 metres deep into the Goudrane camp’s dusty ground, no water was found in the east part of the camp.
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water → dig → camp
“There’s a stark need for water across Wadi Fira,” Paulin Kitungwa, Solidarites International’s project manager, says.
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Kitungwa → ’ → Fira
“We need to create long-term solutions quickly because the need right now is so great in the camps.”
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need → need → camps
The desperate, daily search for clean water is fuelling physical disputes in camps, which often break out as hundreds charge towards isolated water points when water is available.
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water → fuel → points
“When people know their children might not have water, they do anything to get it,” says one refugee queuing at an empty water point in the burning sun with an empty, mouldy jerry can in the Iridimi Camp.
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refugee → know → Camp
…and 19 more, not listed.
The Aporia
