GOUNGOUR, Chad (Reuters) – When a power struggle between Sudan’s rival military leaders shattered a tenuous peace in her village in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, Halime Yacoub Issac’s first instinct was to take her five children and run.
But four days after seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad – a country with its own dire humanitarian crisis – she had yet to receive any assistance and was just hoping they wouldn’t starve.
“We’re entirely dependent on food Chadian families give us,” Issac told Reuters, sitting in a rare patch of shade near the border village of Goungour with other newly arrived women and children, some of them orphans.
Nearby, hundreds of families were camped out under trees or had built flimsy shelters out of sticks and bedsheets that swayed in the wind.
The battles between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that erupted in the capital Khartoum in mid-April have now engulfed large parts of Sudan, killing hundreds, wounding thousands and unleashing a humanitarian disaster that could not have come at a worse time.
Africa was already facing a deepening set of crises – from drought to floods and a growing list of armed conflicts – that has seen demand surge for life-saving humanitarian assistance.
Now, according to an internal U.N. estimate obtained by Reuters, 5 million additional people in Sudan will require emergency assistance, half of them children.
By October, some 860,000 people are expected to flee to neighbouring countries including Chad, placing additional strain on nations already facing some of the world’s most under-funded humanitarian crises. (For a FACTBOX please click [L8N3740DW])
Yet a Reuters analysis of United Nations funding data for Africa shows financial support from key donor governments is dropping off.
Securing additional money is a long shot, 12 aid workers, diplomats and donor government officials told Reuters. More likely, they said, funding gaps will grow as Europe focuses on Ukraine, post-Brexit Britain turns inward, and some lawmakers in the United States, the world’s largest donor, target budget cuts.
“There is going to be less funding this year,” the World Food Programme’s (WFP) new executive director, Cindy McCain, told Reuters during a visit to Somalia this month. “I pray that there won’t be. But the reality of it is that there is going to be less.”
Every day, hundreds of Sudanese trek across the desert scrubland and dry riverbeds that make up large sections of the country’s 1,400-km (870-mile) border with Chad. Some 30,000 have arrived so far, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, which expects it will need to establish five new camps to accommodate them.
Aid agencies are rushing to distribute emergency food and register new arrivals, but resources are tight. Even before the latest crisis, U.N. humanitarian appeals for Africa faced a $17-billion funding gap this year, risking leaving millions without lifesaving assistance.
Desperation is growing among the refugees. Chadian soldiers used whips on Sunday to beat back dozens of women who had started grabbing bags of provisions in Koufroune, another border village, when they saw that supplies brought by a Turkish aid group were running out.
“You’ve got this huge arc of misery across this part of Africa, and Sudan is just the latest crisis to be added to that in humanitarian terms,” Andrew Mitchell, Britain’s minister of state for development and Africa, said during a trip to Kenya this month.
DONORS PULL BACK
Between 2020 and this year, Africa’s needs reflected in U.N. appeals grew nearly 27%. But as wealthy countries began looking inward to shield their citizens from the COVID-19 pandemic, many cut back on humanitarian activities abroad.
Britain, for example, announced in 2021 it would temporarily reduce its aid budget to 0.5% of gross national income from 0.7% to pay for the pandemic response. Last year, it spent a third of its overseas aid budget housing refugees inside the UK, a British aid watchdog said in March.
“There’s no question that very large amounts of money have been lost,” Mitchell said, asked about Britain’s aid budget.
Between 2020, when the UK was the third-biggest contributor to U.N. humanitarian appeals in Africa, and 2022, its contribution dropped by 55%. Mitchell declined to say how much the UK would contribute for 2023.
