Eastern Chad: Sudanese refugees desperately seeking loved ones
Over 150,000 Sudanese refugees are now in Adré, on the border between Chad and the Western Darfur region of Sudan. Most of the refugees are women and children, fleeing extreme violence that has ravaged their homes and villages since April.
“When the fighting started, my mother and I got separated. And I came here to Chad. We arrived separately,” explains Zoura Ismail Abdalla, a 17-year-old refugee from Western Darfur. “We couldn’t bring anything with us. We came at night. And we found each other in this camp.”
Thousands of families have been separated, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is working together with the Red Cross Society of Chad to help families get back in touch. So far, they have helped Sudanese refugees make hundreds of phone calls and around 560 refugees are now back in touch with their loved ones.
Raouda Ahmat Katir, a refugee from Darfur, managed to speak to her son for the first time since fleeing. He is now in Egypt. “I am very happy. I will sleep well when I go back home,” said Katir. “Before I couldn’t sleep. I cried.”
People also desperately lack the essentials, including food, water and shelter and Adré, a town of 25,000 people, is struggling to cope with the influx.
ICRC’s President Mirjana Spoljaric spoke with the Sudanese refugees in Adré and the local authorities. “We are trying to make sure that they can at least contact their families. It is a primary concern for them to know where their relatives are. But they also need to be able to subsist on something.” stated President Spoljaric. “Without resources the local communities will not be able to absorb such a pressure, with so many people, who have nothing to eat.”
Together with the Sudanese Red Crescent, the ICRC has provided relief and essential assistance to thousands of displaced people since the outbreak of the conflict in Sudan in mid-April. With limited resources and growing needs in eastern Chad and Sudan, the ICRC is appealing to its donors for more funding.
SHOTLIST
Length: 5.40min
Location: Eastern Chad, Adré
Copyright: ICRC access all
On Screen Credit: ICRC written or logo
Date: 14.09.2023
00:00 – 00:28 A transit site called Lycée in Adré, a border town in Eastern Chad.
00:28 – 00:37 Volunteers of the Red Cross Society of Chad running phone call session for the Sudanese refugees to help separated families get back in touch.
00:37 - 00:53 SOUNDBITE: Ali Taher Ibrahim, Red Cross Society of Tchad volunteer (in Arabic):
“The number did not go through. Have you called it before? Is the number in the contacts? On this phone?”
00:54 – 01:01 Sudanese refugee on the phone: “Alo, Abdulaye, how are you?”
01:03 - SOUNDBITE: Ali Taher Ibrahim, Chad Red Cross volunteer (in French):
“It’s refugees who have come from Sudan. We put an office here so people can speak with their parents who are in Khartoum so they can tell their parents they are here. The office is here for that.”
01:30 – 01:36 Volunteers of the Red Cross Society of Chad running phone call session for the Sudanese refugees to help separated families get back in touch.
01:50 – 01:55 SOUNDBITE: Sudanese refugee (in Arabic):
“I don’t have other numbers. We have to check Abakar’s number.”
01:57 - 02:10 Sudanese refugees waiting to make calls
02:10 -02:17 “He is not answering. Maybe he is asleep.”
02:22 – 02:33 SOUNDBITE Raouda Ahmat Katir, a refugee from Darfur on the phone (in Arabic):
“Yes, we are in Chad. We are OK, thanks God.”
02:35 – 02:43 SOUNDBITE Raouda Ahmat Katir, a refugee from Darfur (in Arabic):
“I am very happy. I will sleep well when I go back home. Before I couldn’t sleep, I cried.”
02:44 -03:04 Zoura Ismail Abdalla walking to shelter
03:05 – 03:28 – SOUNDBITE Zoura Ismail Abdalla, a seventeen-year-old refugee from Western Darfur: (in Arabic):
“When the fighting started, my mother and I got separated. And I came here to Chad. We arrived separately. We couldn’t bring anything with us. We came at night. And we found each other in this camp.”
03:30 - ICRC’s President Mirjana Spoljaric in Adré with Chad Red Cross
04:29 – SOUNDBITE ICRC’s President (in English):
We need resources. Without resources, this local community is not going be able to carry the weight. The numbers that cross the border are 3 to 4 times higher than the local population. There’s no way the population here will be able to absorb this pressure, and to absorb so many people in need, who have nothing to eat. These women don’t know what they have left behind, but they must assume that their husbands, their sons, their uncles have lost their lives, and many have disappeared so what we are trying to do is make sure that they can at least try to contact their families. It is a primary concern for them to know where their relatives are. But again, they need to be able to subsist here, they need to be able to live on something and they need to be able to have the resources to recover and to reconnect with family members if they are still alive. They also want to go back and bury those who were killed because many haven’t even been buried on the way and as they were fleeing the violence.”
Ends
For further information, please contact:
Lucien Christen, ICRC Dakar, tel: +221 7818 646 87, lchristen@icrc.org
Alyona Synenko, ICRC Nairobi, tel: +254 716 897 265, asynenko@icrc.org
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a neutral, impartial and independent organization with an exclusively humanitarian mandate that stems from the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It helps people around the world affected by armed conflict and other violence, doing everything it can to protect their lives and dignity and to relieve their suffering, often alongside its Red Cross and Red Crescent partners.
