By the side of a dusty road in Adré, a key crossing point on the Sudan-Chad border, Buthaina, 38, sits surrounded by other women. Each of them has their children with them, but none have any belongings. Buthaina fled with her six children from the besieged town of El-Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur region, more than 480 km (300 miles) away, when there was nothing left to eat or drink.
“We left with nothing; we just ran to save our lives,” Buthaina told a BBC reporter. “We didn’t want to go – my children were top of their class at school, and we were having a good life at home.”
Sudan’s civil war began in April last year when tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their former paramilitary allies, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), erupted into violence. The conflict, partly fueled by disagreements over moving toward civilian rule, has since spiraled into a brutal conflict that shows no signs of abating. Thousands have lost their lives, millions have been displaced, and parts of the country have teetered on the brink of famine. The conflict is creating a humanitarian crisis that many fear could become the world’s worst famine if vital international aid doesn’t arrive quickly.
Adré: A symbol of political failure and human suffering
Adré, once a quiet border town on Sudan’s western border with Chad, has become a powerful symbol of the political failures and humanitarian devastation caused by the current conflict. Until last month, the Adré crossing had been closed since January, and only a handful of aid trucks had been able to enter the country. Now reopened, there are concerns among aid agencies that what deliveries are coming in may be too little and too late.
Every day, dozens of Sudanese refugees make the difficult journey across the border into Chad, many of them women carrying hungry and thirsty children on their backs. Upon arriving, they rush to a water tank set up by the World Food Programme (WFP), one of several UN agencies raising the alarm on the scale of Sudan’s humanitarian disaster. The situation is dire, and the stories of those who have fled paint a dismal picture of the tragedy unfolding.
A makeshift existence in the camps
After arriving in Adré, we head to a makeshift camp near the border, where refugees have built shelters from wood, cloth and pieces of plastic. As we walk through the camp, it begins to rain, eventually turning to torrential downpours. I ask my guide, Ying Hu, an associate reporting officer for UNHCR (the UN’s refugee agency), if the flimsy shelters can withstand heavy rain. “They can’t,” he replies. “With the rain comes many diseases. And the worst part is that the floods often mean it takes us days to get back here by car, which means that aid doesn’t even reach these people.”
Like many other camps in Sudan and Chad, the lack of basic necessities is evident in this camp. Famine has already been declared in parts of Darfur, such as the Zam Zam camp, where the UN has reliable information. The World Food Programme says it has delivered more than 200,000 tonnes of food between April 2023 and July 2024, but this is far short of what is needed. The situation is further complicated by both sides of the conflict blocking aid supplies to areas controlled by their rivals. Reports of the RSF and other militias stealing and damaging aid convoys have further complicated efforts to deliver essential supplies, while the SAF is accused of blocking supplies from reaching areas under RSF control, including much of Darfur.
The BBC has contacted both the RSF and SAF about these allegations but has not received a response. Both factions have previously denied obstructing humanitarian aid deliveries.
Port Sudan: Relief waits amid bureaucratic delays
On the other side of the country, we visit Port Sudan, the main aid hub on Sudan’s east coast. Here, a convoy of aid trucks can wait six weeks or more before being cleared by the SAF to travel onwards. This bottleneck delays much-needed relief for people in war-torn areas. Recently, the SAF agreed to allow aid agencies to resume shipments through Adré, which could potentially deliver vital aid to beleaguered populations in Darfur.
Walking through a camp for internally displaced people in Port Sudan, the scenes are similarly heartbreaking. Stories of loss, abuse and survival abound. In one tent, a group of women sit in a circle, some with their children in their arms. They all share stories of suffering in RSF prisons – stories of rape, torture and psychological trauma.
One woman, whose identity the Voctn has decided to protect, recounts her horrific experience. She was captured while fleeing Omdurman, near Khartoum, with her two-year-old son. She says, “Every day, they would take my son down the hallway to a room, and I would hear him crying, screaming for help.”