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

More than 1 million Sudanese refugees in Chad face immediate cuts to food, water, shelter, protection and health care unless donors close a $428 million funding gap, the World Food Programme and UNHCR said.

The warning marks a harder phase in one of the region’s largest displacement crises. According to the two agencies, Chad now hosts 1.3 million Sudanese refugees, with more than 900,000 arriving since war broke out in Sudan in 2023. Nearly 15,000 more people have crossed into Chad since January, they said.

The agencies said current resources allow basic assistance for only four out of every ten refugees. That ratio is already visible in living conditions. WFP and UNHCR said about 80,000 families have no shelter, and in some sites refugees are surviving on less than half the minimum daily water requirement.

In eastern Chad, the numbers are pressing local systems to their limit. One in 13 people in Chad is now a refugee, according to the agencies. In the east, the figure rises to one in three.

WFP said it reaches more than a million people in refugee-hosting areas with food assistance but has already been forced to halve support for most refugees because it has less than half the funding it needs. The agency said women and young children were being hit first and hardest, with nutrition support for new arrivals under pressure.

UNHCR said the same shortfall is shrinking access to shelter, water and basic health care. It said health centers were overstretched, protection services for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence were being scaled back, and classrooms in most locations held more than 100 children per teacher.

More than 243,000 people remain in eastern border areas because there is not enough money to move them to settlements farther inland, according to the agencies. Families there are sleeping in the open or in makeshift shelters where disease, insecurity and harsh weather remain constant threats.

“What we are seeing in eastern Chad is the human cost of funding shortfalls,” UNHCR representative Patrice Ahouansou said in the joint statement. He said the refugee response in the east finished 2025 with only about one-third of the resources needed.

Sarah Gordon-Gibson, WFP’s country director in Chad, said the agency could not deliver enough food to the people who needed it most. “This will force them into devastating coping strategies and put lives at risk,” she said.

The crisis is being measured differently depending on where it is viewed from. In N’Djamena and the camps near the Sudan border, the issue is immediate survival: water trucking, shelter materials, food rations and functioning clinics. In donor capitals, the same emergency can appear as another budget line in a crowded aid cycle. Reuters search reporting described the issue through the scale of the shortfall and the risk of drastic cuts. WFP and UNHCR described it through the services already being withdrawn and the people left outside them.

That gap matters because humanitarian deterioration often happens in steps. First rations are reduced. Then relocation stalls. Then health and protection services begin to close. By the time famine indicators or disease outbreaks dominate headlines, the earlier budget decisions are already months old.

The agencies also stressed that Chad has kept its borders open throughout the Sudan conflict despite severe strain on local resources. They said international support had not matched that burden. Their appeal asks donors to mobilize funds over the next six months to keep basic assistance running.

This is not only a refugee story. It is also a test of whether the international aid system can sustain long wars that fall out of the top global headlines. WFP said emergency help remains a vital lifeline even as it and UNHCR invest in longer-term resilience and social protection.

Without new money, that balance will disappear. The agencies said assistance will be scaled back further in the coming months unless the funding gap is met.

The next deadline is operational, not rhetorical. Donor commitments over the next six months will determine whether food distributions, water access, relocations and clinic support continue at current reduced levels or are cut again.