AFRICA/CHAD – Generations without schooling. Programs to ensure access to education for school-age Sudanese refugees have come to nothing

N’Djamena – Following the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan in 2023, Chad has become one of the world’s leading countries in terms of the number of refugees it hosts. And the majority of Sudanese refugees in Chad come from Darfur, a region that was the epicentre of a civil conflict that began in 2003 and ended in 2020.
According to figures updated last January, reported by the organization Development Action Platform, the number of Sudanese refugees registered in Chad has reached 904,000, a huge number that has been added to the 400,000 refugees already present in the country.
To analyze the conditions in which refugees who arrived after 2023 are living, the United Nations Refugee Agency conducted a survey, the results of which, published in recent days, highlight how Chad’s efforts are not entirely sufficient to address the crisis.
In 76% of cases, the families interviewed reported that their younger children had stopped attending school.
This is a very high percentage, given the widespread reports of the many initiatives undertaken by the government in N’Djamena, which over the years has been committed to ensuring access to education for Sudanese students in the country. In this regard, one need only recall the school exams held last September. On that occasion, more than five thousand students were able to complete their academic year and enroll in the next. The programme was supported by UNHCR and UNICEF in various ways, including the transfer of students from refugee camps to the exam centres, the distribution of study materials and, finally, psychological support for the students.
The survey revealed further findings: only 48% of respondents said they had access to healthcare facilities in Chad, whilst 10% said they had access to sanitation facilities. Furthermore, as many as 32% said they had suffered physical violence whilst fleeing, and 20% said they still had family members in Sudan. Of these, 84% cannot leave the war-torn country due to a lack of transport needed to leave, whilst 7% do not leave for fear of arbitrary arrest.
One of the biggest problems concerns the lack of identity documents among refugees: as many as 87% of respondents stated they did not have any, either because they had been lost or because they had been seized by armed militias during their flight. The lack of identity documents prevents access to the services provided by local authorities. Ensuring that Sudanese refugees are issued with identity documents is the challenge that the Chadian government must address in the coming months, to ensure that the management of refugees does not turn into a crisis.
In recent years, a number of measures had already been introduced for refugees who were in the country before the outbreak of the conflict in Sudan. These include the 2020 Asylum Act and the decrees on legal protection and biometric identification, both of which were adopted in 2019.

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