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Chad: With 5.7 million people food insecure, more urgent funding is required, says OCHA
The humanitarian crisis in Chad that’s been driven by a deadly combination of food insecurity, forced displacement, health emergencies and climate change shocks prompted an urgent UN request on Monday for funding to assist seven million people out of at total population of 18 million.
“Chad lives in a regional context which is difficult and which is also very unstable,” said Madeleine Alingué, Chad’s Secretary of State for Economic Prosperity and international Partnerships on Monday.
Briefing reporters at the UN in Geneva she explained that Chad shared its border countries “in crisis. Our border with Libya is in crisis, our border with Niger, with the CAR, with Sudan, the instability of all these countries generates a direct impact on us,” she said.
“More recently, from Sudan, we have received over 460,000 refugees since April of this year. This has put enormous pressure on our already precarious and limited resources,” added Ms. Alingué.
The influx of people from Sudan, combined with insufficient funding, have put a massive strain on already-fragile support services. Today, one in every 17 people living in Chad is a refugee, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Chad suffers from recurrent diseases and epidemics such as malaria, measles and meningitis, affecting almost 1.7 million people, half of whom are women and girls. They face problems of access to basic health care throughout the country, said OCHA.
Its revised Humanitarian Response Plan for 2023 targets 5.2 million people out of 7.6 million in need. More than six months into the response, Chad has received 26 per cent (or $244 million) out of the required funding of a total $920.6 million.
“The HRP (Humanitarian Response Plan) for Chad states that more than 7.7 million people are in need of assistance. 3.6 million people are food insecure. We have 1.1 million refugees and displaced people in the country. So that means that the needs are enormous,” reported Ms. Alingué.
Humanitarians have described the situation in Chad as complex, while needs remain high.
“Chad, in addition to the situation of refugees and internally displaced persons, faces a situation of food insecurity and malnutrition which affects 5.7 million people with 2.1 million of them finding themselves in a situation very critical,” said Violet Kakyomya, UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in Chad.
Last year saw the worst lean season in a decade, leaving 2.1 million people severely food insecure. Although the projected figures for the 2023 lean season are lower, they still forecast 1.86 million severely food insecure people.
Joining the call to more urgent funding, Pierre Honnorat, Director and Representative of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Chad described the situation in Chad as “catastrophic”. Multiple emergencies have stretched the UN agency’s capacity to respond in full to those in need.
“We have to respond to…six emergencies: we support the Government's response in these six emergencies which are the Cameroonian refugees, Nigerien refugees, refugees from the Central African Republic, Sudanese refugees today and of course internally displaced people, plus as I say, this lean season. So, we really need support and this is a call today. »
Some 2.5 million Chadians received food assistance in the first six months of 2023 and 560,000 benefited from a nutritional intervention; 320,000 children have received school meals.
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