1.3 Million Sudanese Refugees in Chad Face Deeper Food and Water Cuts

More than a million Sudanese refugees in Chad face immediate cuts to food, water, shelter, protection and health care unless donors fill a $428 million funding gap, according to a joint warning from UNHCR and the World Food Programme.

The agencies said Chad now hosts 1.3 million Sudanese refugees, including more than 900,000 who arrived after war broke out in Sudan in 2023. Nearly 15,000 more have crossed into Chad since January, according to the statement published by WFP.

The numbers point to one of the largest under-covered life-systems emergencies in the current news cycle. The April 11 global scan ranked the story as high significance and high invisibility, noting that Africa-focused coverage has treated it as a survival crisis while much broader international coverage has remained thin.

The humanitarian strain is already visible in daily conditions. UNHCR said current resources allow basic assistance for only four out of every 10 refugees. Around 80,000 families are without shelter because of funding shortages, while in Oure Cassoni in eastern Chad refugees are surviving on less than half the minimum amount of water needed each day.

The WFP said it already reaches more than a million people in refugee-hosting areas with food assistance, but has been forced to cut support in half for the majority of refugees. It said women and young children were being hit first as nutrition programmes for new arrivals came under pressure.

Patrice Ahouansou, UNHCR’s representative in Chad, said the agencies ended 2025 with only around one-third of the resources needed for a full response in the east of the country. “Without urgent support from donors, this year will bring deeper cuts, worse conditions and even greater suffering,” he said.

Sarah Gordon-Gibson, WFP’s country director in Chad, said the shortfall would force families into “devastating coping strategies” and put lives at risk.

The crisis is also reshaping the burden carried by Chad itself. WFP said one in 13 people in the country is now a refugee, and in eastern Chad the ratio is one in three. Chad has kept its border open throughout the Sudan conflict, according to the agencies, even as resources and host communities have come under increasing strain.

More than 243,000 people remain stranded in eastern border areas because there is not enough funding to move them to settlements further inland, the agencies said. Families there are sleeping in the open or in makeshift shelters, exposed to disease, insecurity and severe weather.

Regional framing shows the uneven visibility of the story. In African coverage, this is a direct account of what happens when money runs out: less food, less water, more exposure, more disease. In donor-country discussion, the same emergency is often reduced to budget gaps and logistics tables.

That distance matters because the cuts are not theoretical. Classrooms in most locations now hold more than 100 children per teacher, according to UNHCR. Health centres are overstretched, and protection services for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence are being scaled back.

The agencies said they are still investing in longer-term resilience and social protection, but emergency relief remains the immediate lifeline. With Sudan’s war nearing its three-year mark, the funding gap is colliding with a crisis that is becoming protracted rather than temporary.

Unlike a battlefield development, there is no single event that will force this story back onto front pages. The deterioration is measured in smaller units: rations halved, water access cut, relocations delayed, shelters not built.

UNHCR and WFP said they need the funding for the next six months to sustain operations. That timeline now sets the next concrete step. If donors do not move quickly, the agencies say the cuts will deepen in the coming months across refugee settlements in eastern Chad.