Chad: ICRC aids 40,000
18-04-2006 News Release 06/34
N'Djamena (ICRC) – After assisting 2,500 internally displaced persons south of the town of Adre in eastern Chad, the ICRC is now coming to the aid of some 40,000 Chadians who have been forced to flee their homes because of armed raids and banditry along the country's border with Sudan.
The first of three Antonov cargo planes landed today in Abeche, bringing a total of 15 tonnes of jerrycans, blankets, tarpaulins and mats as well as equipment and chemicals to improve the water supply in villages affected by the influx. Two additional flights are scheduled for Thursday and Saturday.
Most displaced families are living in conditions of great poverty and are exposed to the harsh sun, sand and winds. The rainy season – now just a month away – will make aid deliveries more difficult. Given the prevailing lack of security following recent attacks in eastern Chad and the capital, N'Djamena, the situation of many thousands of already vulnerable people could deteriorate further.
In the recent past, villages throughout the area have had to deal with the arrival of internally displaced people, but their hospitality has often exhausted their meagre resources and put the residents themselves at risk. The aid will therefore be delivered to various locations along the Chad-Sudan border to which a high number of Chadians have fled. The ICRC intends to bring the supplies as close as possible to the beneficiaries'original places of residence, and thereby facilitate their return home once the situation allows. This should also deter further displacement and concentrations of people attracted by and/or increasingly dependent on outside aid.
The ICRC has been in Chad since 1977 and currently has a staff of nearly 130 in the country working out of its delegation in N'Djamena and its sub-delegation in Abeche, which opened in 2004.
For further information, please contact:
Anahita Kar, ICRC Chad, tel. +235 201 005
Marco Yuri Jiménez Rodríguez, ICRC Geneva, tel. +41 79 217 32 17