NEW YORK, January 9, 2024—Accounts from people who fled Sudan's West Darfur region over the last six months paint a picture of an unbearable spiral of violence, with looting, burning of homes, beatings, sexual violence, and massacres.
A retrospective mortality survey carried out by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) found that deaths in the region increased dramatically among communities that were targeted by attacks since the eruption of war in Sudan in April 2023.
The violence in West Darfur is rooted in political, economic, and territorial rivalries between local communities and has taken a particularly extreme turn in the regional capital of El Geneina, which is now virtually empty of the Masalit community that used to live there.
Key facts
- Nearly 500,000 people have fled from West Darfur to eastern Chad in 2023
- In Ourang camp, with nearly 44,000 Sudanese refugees, more than 1 in 10 people reported that a member of their household had been killed between April and August 2023
- Across the camps, firearms were the most common cause of death, and 4 to 5 percent of men under 44 years of age had gone missing
MSF teams conducted more than 3,000 interviews in camps in eastern Chad's Ouaddaï province among people who fled from West Darfur in 2023, gathering information on the number and causes of death among members of their households.
In Ourang camp, with nearly 44,000 Sudanese refugees, more than 1 in 10 people reported that a member of their household had been killed between April and August 2023, usually during peaks of violence in El Geneina or while they fled toward Chad.
In Arkoum camp, with more than 25,000 Sudanese refugees, and Toumtouma camp, with approximately 18,000 refugees and returnees, people also reported violence as by far the most frequent cause of death in their households from April to August 2023.
Across the camps, households reported that men had been killed at the highest rates, with firearms as the most common cause of death. A further 4 to 5 percent of the men under 44 years of age had gone missing.
The survey corroborates the accounts of the nearly 1,500 wounded Sudanese refugees treated by MSF teams in the surgical department of Adré hospital, eastern Chad, in collaboration with Chadian health authorities, since June 2023.
"Many of the wounded reported that Arab militiamen were targeting them because of their Masalit ethnicity and shooting at them in El Geneina," said Claire Nicolet, MSF head of emergency programs in Chad. "They told us that this violence then continued in the villages and checkpoints along the road to Chad, systematically targeting men from the Masalit community."
“They told us that this wasn’t our country and gave us two options: immediately leave for Chad or be killed,” said H., a refugee who fled to Adré from El Geneina. “They took some men and I saw them shooting them in the streets, with no one to bury the corpses.”
The journey to Chad was also fraught with violence for many of those surveyed. "On the road to Chad, we were stopped at many checkpoints,” explained another patient MSF treated in Adré. “They were asking us what tribe we were from. They were targeting Masalit people."
While cases of sexual violence may be underreported, MSF supports medical consultations at Adré hospital for survivors of sexual violence, treating 132 patients from April through September.
The world must not turn away from Sudanese refugees in Chad
Read moreMore recent episodes of violence took place in November in Ardamatta, an area of West Darfur where people from El Geneina fled in June. Hundreds of people were then reportedly killed in Ardamatta when militias took control of the area in November. MSF and Chadian Ministry of Health teams subsequently treated 333 people across the border in Adré, most of whom had suffered gunshot wounds during the violence in Ardamatta.
In total, nearly 500,000 people have fled from West Darfur to eastern Chad in 2023 and now face a dire humanitarian crisis with limited food, water, and health care. In the camps surveyed by MSF, malnutrition rates were also alarmingly high, and diarrhea—an illness often caused by inadequate water and sanitation—was the most common cause of death for children under five years old.
