In a refugee camp in Chad, Sudanese women are running out of hope

A settlement in Adré, a Chadian border town, has become a makeshift home for more than 100,000 Sudanese refugees.

Adré, Chad — Squatting on the sandy ground, a young girl is weaving grass stems into a roof. The tiny hut she is making is surrounded by tens of thousands of others like it, made hastily of sticks and leaves covered with tarps or plastic sacks.

This spontaneous settlement in Adré, a Chadian border town of 12,000 inhabitants, has become a makeshift home to more than 100,000 Sudanese refugees. Almost 90 percent are women and children who crossed the border on foot, fleeing brutal violence that submerged their native Darfur soon after the conflict broke out in Sudan on April 15.

Kaltuma, a small woman with deep wrinkles and cloudy cataract eyes, had to summon all her strength to build her hut. She shares it with her two granddaughters, aged three and five. Kaltuma’s daughter took her two other children and left in search of daily work in the agricultural fields out of town. Every morning, Kaltuma tours Adré’s neighbourhoods, knocking on doors and asking people for food. Whatever she collects on a given day, she uses it to prepare a meal for herself and her granddaughters.

The residents of Adré have welcomed refugees, but Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world, and resources are scarce. “The number of people who arrived here with nothing is more than tenfold the size of the local population. Imagine something like this happening in a European town,” said Mirjana Spoljaric, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who visited Eastern Chad to raise awareness around the stark shortage of humanitarian funding for this crisis.

Following the sharp increase in the population, food prices skyrocketed, and essential services like water and healthcare, which were in short supply even before the influx of refugees, came under enormous stress.