Month: February 2017

Chad is located in Central Africa. The country is one of the poorest and most underprivileged in the world, ranking 184 out of 188 on the 2015 Human Development Index. The population of 11.5 million is rapidly growing and is very young (45% of people are under 15 years).

SAS’s project is in the Hadjer Hadid region. These communities have multiple needs. There is high infant mortality (124 per 1,000 births) and low life expectancy 51.6 female/48.6 male. Over 30% of children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Around half of girls receive no primary school education. Factors contributing to these problems include:

• Low rainfall which limits the availability of easily accessible groundwater. People are therefore forced to use unclean water sources. Less than 20% of the region has access to safe drinking water.

• A prevalence of waterborne diseases, diarrhoea, cholera, hepatitis and typhoid associated with drinking unclean water

• A lack of basic hygiene and sanitation practices (over 75% of people defecate in the open). This results in widespread disease transmission and high infant mortality rates.

• Girls do most water fetching. This often takes several hours’ daily, making school attendance impossible.

SAS has projects running in Hadjer Hadid, Eastern Chad. This is located in on the edge of the homeland of the Masalit people, who historically have spanned the Sudan-Chad border. The 2003 Darfur War resulted in widespread displacement and the arrival of over 400,000 refugees in Chad, located in 13 different refugee camps along the Darfur border. Several of these refugee camps are located in near to the town of Hadjer Hadid (population approx. 10,000) where SAS have their operational base in the East.

These camps have existed for over ten years in what has developed into a protracted refugee situation (PRS), and they now more closely resemble mid-sized towns rather that camps. Furthermore, worsening circumstances in Darfur mean that there is little prospect of their return being feasible.  There is therefore a critical need for development initiatives within these refugee camps such that they are transformed into viable, resilient, peaceful & sustainable communities. Furthermore, surrounding Chadian villages have taken on additional burden of accommodating refugee communities and they too are struggling with subsistence livelihoods and chronic vulnerability, which requires action to address.

For more detail on our work, see the map of the region surrounding Hadjer Hadid.