Sudanese refugee influx into Chad surges amid reports of rape and abductions
September 25, 2026 (GENEVA) – Daily arrivals of Sudanese refugees crossing into eastern Chad have surged twentyfold over the past week, with newly arriving women and girls describing systematic kidnapping and sexual violence along escape routes, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.
More than 400 people a day are now crossing the frontier through the border entry points of Adré and Tiné, driven out by escalating clashes, airstrikes, and drone attacks across the Darfur, Kordofan, and Blue Nile regions.
The sudden escalation brings total refugee arrivals into Chad to over 55,000 this year, pushing the cumulative number who have crossed the border to escape the civil war since April 2023 to nearly 1 million.
Humanitarian officials reported a severe deterioration in protection conditions during transit. Women and girls reaching border reception centres described surviving harrowing journeys where armed groups routinely subjected fleeing civilians to abduction, sexual assault, and rape before they could reach safety in Chad.
Mamadou Dian Balde, UN regional refugee coordinator for the Sudan situation, said the testimonies gathered from new arrivals underline the catastrophic human toll of the conflict, noting that transit and reception teams are prioritizing urgent medical, psychosocial, and protection services for victims of gender-based violence.
Frontline border infrastructure is buckling under the rapid influx. In Tiné, an emergency transit facility designed for temporary staging is sheltering more than 4,300 people, resulting in severe shortages of clean water, sanitation facilities, and secure accommodation for vulnerable women and children.
Across eastern Chad’s remote border regions, over 190,000 refugees remain stranded in informal sites awaiting inland relocation, with approximately 31,000 families lacking adequate shelter and most individuals surviving on less than half the internationally recognized minimum daily water requirement.
The border crisis reflects a wider catastrophe inside Sudan, where the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has forcibly displaced 11.3 million people, including 6.4 million internally and 3.5 million across borders, cementing it as the world’s largest displacement emergency.
Balde warned that acute protection deficits and lack of basic aid in initial countries of asylum are driving secondary migration toward Europe, where sea arrivals of Sudanese rose by 245% to 14,104 in 2025 from 4,094 the previous year.
Humanitarian relief operations remain severely constrained, with the UN’s $1.6 billion regional refugee response plan for 2026 currently funded at just 20%.