More than 240,000 people from Sudan have crossed the border since hostilities began in Khartoum three months ago, according to RFI. The authorities, UN agencies and their partners are redoubling their efforts to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in the east of the country. The government has allocated land for the construction of three new refugee camps, while UNHCR has expanded seven existing sites, which are home to more than 400,000 Sudanese over the past 20 years.
The last pillars are planted, the last tarpaulins are stretched: the new camp of Orang, out of the ground in barely a week, is ready to receive 5,000 people. A real logistical challenge at the beginning of the rainy season in Chad. Amine Haroun Agar, of the ADES NGO, is not proud of his teams:
In one week, we built around 1,000 shelters. Can you imagine this capacity to mobilize in terms of logistics? The country is facing a breakdown in the means of construction, but still: the forces, the energies are mobilized so that the city of Adré is freed of the bottleneck.”
The goal is to welcome 35,000 refugees by the end of the month. Sany Aakilou, UNHCR, explains: We are currently at about 40 latrines already completed in four days. And we will continue because we have a goal of 1,500 latrines at Ourang camp.”
The work was completed just in time to receive the very first convoy of Sudanese from the border. It is only 25 kilometres away, but with the rainy season, some trucks can take up to two days to travel.
Brice Deglas, UNHCR Emergency Coordinator: When you see the flow we currently have, the transit centres become increasingly congested. We must therefore quickly change our strategy to continue to identify additional sites in order to increase the capacity to receive refugees.”
Two other camps are emerging as UNHCR and the authorities seek to identify a fourth site. Because the prognoses on the evolution of the crisis remain very pessimistic.
