Aid Cuts Leave 1.3 Million Sudanese Refugees in Chad Facing Deeper Hunger

Current funding allows basic assistance for only four in every 10 Sudanese refugees in Chad, according to a joint warning from the U.N. refugee agency and the World Food Programme, leaving many families without regular access to food, shelter, water and health care.

UNHCR and WFP said the two agencies face a combined shortfall of $428 million over the next six months, with Chad now hosting 1.3 million Sudanese refugees. More than 900,000 of them arrived after war broke out in Sudan in 2023, the agencies said.

The numbers are hardest in eastern Chad. The agencies said 243,000 people remain stranded in border areas because there is not enough money to move them inland to settlements. Many are sleeping in the open or under makeshift cover, exposed to disease, insecurity and harsh weather.

Food aid has already been cut in half for most refugees, WFP said. The agency said it still reaches more than a million people in refugee-hosting areas, but it has less than half the funding it needs. Women and young children are being hit first as nutrition support for new arrivals comes under pressure, according to WFP.

Water is failing too. In Oure Cassoni in Ennedi Est province, refugees are surviving on less than half the minimum daily water requirement, the agencies said. UNHCR said 80,000 families are currently without shelter because of funding shortfalls, while health centers are overstretched and protection services for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence are being scaled back.

In Chad, this is not an abstract donor appeal. The government has kept its border open through three years of war in neighboring Sudan, and host communities are still receiving new arrivals. UNHCR said nearly 15,000 people have crossed into Chad since January alone.

African coverage has treated the situation as a strain on a frontline state that has absorbed a regional war without the money to match. In donor capitals, the same numbers often arrive as another humanitarian gap. The agencies' statement read more bluntly: in eastern Chad, one in three people is now a refugee, and the support system is being cut while arrivals continue.

Patrice Ahouansou, UNHCR's representative in Chad, said the emergency had ended 2025 with only around one-third of the resources needed for a full response in the east. Without urgent donor support, he said, this year will bring deeper cuts and greater suffering for families that have already fled war.

WFP Chad country director Sarah Gordon-Gibson said the agency remains committed to fighting food insecurity in both the short and long term, but said funding levels now make that impossible at the required scale. She said the cuts would force refugees into damaging coping strategies and put lives at risk.

The education system is also breaking under the weight of displacement. UNHCR said classrooms in most locations now hold more than 100 children per teacher. That leaves children who fled one conflict in a second emergency, where food rations are shrinking and schooling is reduced to overcrowded supervision.

The agencies asked donors to fund the response for the next six months before conditions deteriorate further. Chad's openness, they said, needs to be matched by international responsibility-sharing.

The wider war in Sudan has produced one of the world's biggest displacement crises, but the file travels differently depending on where it lands. U.N. agencies are warning of immediate cuts to water, food and health services. European policymakers tend to see a migration and stability problem arriving later. In eastern Chad, it is already present in the daily arithmetic of half-rations, open-air shelters and water points running below emergency minimums.

No new resettlement or financing package was announced with the warning. UNHCR and WFP said the next six months will determine whether current services can be sustained or cut again.