The Plight of Homecoming for Chadians Fleeing Violence in Sudan

Moungoro, Chad – This was not how Hawa hoped her homecoming would be.

Under a tree, the 60-year-old farmer has set up a makeshift shelter with walls and a roof of straw held up by branches she found nearby. She and her family recently arrived in Moungoro, a new displacement site in Eastern Chad hosting thousands of people fleeing war-torn Sudan.

Though she was born in Chad, Hawa has lived the last 20 years of her life in Jimerza, a small village located in Western Sudan about two hours away from the border with Chad. But when the violence escalated and reached her town, she fled across the border.
IOM teams conduct pre-registration interviews with people fleeing violence in Sudan at the Mogororo site in Sila province in Eastern Chad. Photo: IOM/Annie Bartkowski 2023

“We walked for hours, carrying only a few essential items on donkey-drawn carts,” she remembers. Upon arriving in Chad, they settled in the Moungoro site.

Since 15 April 2023, deadly violence has engulfed Sudan, killing more than 500 people including four UN staff members, and displacing an estimated 434,000 persons within as well as to neighbouring countries.

Among the people crossing the 1,400-kilometre-long border between Chad and Sudan are approximately 12,500 “returnees”; people of Chadian origin who had lived for decades in Sudan and must now rebuild their lives in a land they have not called “home” in a long time.