Starving to death is as scary as the war for Sudanese refugees in Chad

The looming famine in Sudan is pushing thousands of civilians from Darfur to flee to Chad, say refugees and aid groups.

Adre, Chad – Under the scorching sun, Awatef Adam Mohamed has found refuge beyond the porous desert border between Sudan and Chad.

She arrived on June 8, joining tens of thousands of civilians fleeing the horrors that war brought to Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur.

But recently, another layer of crisis started pushing people out of Sudan, a vast hunger that is threatening millions.

Since a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into civil war on April 15, 2023, the two sides have plunged the country into a devastating crisis.

Some 10 million people are displaced – the highest figure in the world – and famine-like conditions are taking hold across the country.

About 756,000 people are facing “catastrophic levels of hunger” with an additional 25.6 million people facing acute food shortages, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the United Nations’ hunger-level scale.

As a result, people are moving, seeking physical safety and enough food to sustain life, and more than 600,000 have ended up in Chad, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Many are barely surviving, dependent on food aid from the World Food Programme (WFP).

“We’ve seen the impact of the reduction as more people became malnourished,” Boi said.

Malnutrition occurs when the human body is deprived of vital nutrients, not just calories.

But refugees sometimes have no choice but to trade their WFP rations – designed to provide certain percentages of protein, fats and carbohydrates – for less nutritious but bulkier food that can fill stomachs for a few days longer.

Omima Musa, 27, exchanges her food kit for white rice at the market so she can feed her baby and two other children three times a day for a bit longer, she explains as she rocks her baby gently in her arms.

But even though Omima’s baby girl is less hungry, she is malnourished, which makes her susceptible to illnesses – like malaria.

Seeking safety, seeking sustenance

Musa Maman – who supervises and monitors medical activities for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF – says the rains, prime malaria season, have started and will last at least two more months.

“We’re going to see an increase in malaria. August is the worst month,” Musa told media.

The Masalit are one of the largest tribes in Darfur and are more sedentary and focused on farming, which leads to them being referred to as “non-Arabs”. The RSF and its allies attack the tribe often.

Awatef holds her baby, wrapped in a red shawl, in her arms and her four other children cluster around, listless.

Her husband disappeared when the RSF and allied nomadic militias (referred to commonly as Arabs) raided her Masalit village in West Darfur some months ago, looking to kill men and teenage boys.

Two of her brothers were killed in front of her during the attack.

“They were martyred in the house,” she says matter-of-factly, not discussing how they were killed. “I saw them being murdered.”

After the attack, Awatef struggled to feed herself and her children, pushing her to come to eastern Chad.

There they joined countless women and children huddled in the hot desert, waiting to register with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to be given food and medical treatment.

Rights groups say the RSF and the army are creating the food crisis in Sudan.

The former has looted cities and markets and spoiled harvests by attacking and expelling farmers, while the latter has restricted aid groups from reaching beleaguered populations in RSF-controlled areas.

In March, the Sudanese army denied permission to aid groups to ship food across the Chadian border to West Darfur, citing security reasons, saying the border has been used to provide weapons to the RSF.

The army later approved food shipments via Tina, Chad, which borders North Darfur, where army and RSF troops are present. But that did not help West Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people are struggling to find food, possibly leading to an uptick of new arrivals into Chad, according to Boi.