‘I have searched and searched for help’: the Sudanese women left alone to live hand to mouth in Chad’s desert camps

As the war in Sudan pushes more people across the border, malnutrition is on the rise in Chad’s remote settlements where 86% of the refugees are women and children

For hours, jolting along the waterlogged dirt track to the hospital, 18-year-old Makka Ibraheem Mohammed held on tight to her seat and focused on stopping herself vomiting. She was in labour, in extreme pain after her uterus ruptured, but was now being tossed around in the ambulance that jumped along the dips and bumps of the road through the Chadian desert.

Most of the 878,000 Sudanese refugees who have fled to Chad since 2023, living hand to mouth in this harsh landscape, are women. They stay in isolated camps in the desert with limited water and food, no work and with medical help often a life-threateningly long distance away.