Overview (Eric): The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has insisted that Team Zamzam move to a new refugee camp in Chad, 20+ kilometers to the west of where they had been working so successfully near Tiné in Bami Joura camp. (Tiné is right on the border with Darfur, indeed extending into Darfur as Tina). The name of the new camp location is Mayba and very little information about it is available. The reasons for the move are not entirely clear, given the importance of the work Team Zamzam was doing. For example, an enormous series of meals during the recent celebration of Eid al-Adha in Bami Joura was tremendously successful, raising camp morale.
But security concerns are certainly legitimate: the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have attacked the Tina/Tiné area repeatedly, with ground assaults and drone bombings. In any event, for Team members to retain their UN food ration cards—and to stay in compliance with UNHCR organizational imperatives—they must register in Mayba. The Team is already talking about the need for some members traveling back to the Tiné area to assist those who remain there, and those who continue to cross the Darfur/Chad border.
Although traders of food and other commodities may well make their way to Mayba, Team Zamzam faces a situation in which they will likely need to travel either to the Tiné market or the market at another established refugee camp (some camps are over 20 years old at this point, and many residents are deeply unhappy with conditions). Sanitation and hygiene will be particularly important, as this forced move occurs just at the beginning of the rainy season; heavier rains will create mud that makes travel extremely difficult, if not impossible. The budget for our Project will do as much as possible to provide essential hygiene supplies.
Notably, it is unclear whether UNHCR and/or WFP have prepositioned sufficient food in anticipation of the impending transportation difficulties. Without the prepositioning of food during the rains, it may well be that even the half rations to which UNHCR committed will not arrive in timely fashion.
It is of course terribly discouraging for Team Zamzam to be forced to move yet again. They fled Zamzam IDP camp in April 2025 when it was brutally overrun by the Rapid Support Forces. Almost miraculously, the Team had reconstituted itself in the Tina/Tiné area by June 2025 and had begun work that continued through the end of this past May.
Now they have been forced to relocate yet again.
Nonetheless, the Team is in good spirits, morale his high according to Gaffar, and the women are as committed as ever to providing what humanitarian services are most in need. And those needs are acute and growing rapidly, with no signs that hostilities in Darfur/Sudan will end anytime soon.
Conditions in Eastern Chad:
For too much of the past twenty-three years, the plight of people living in eastern Chad has been received only secondary news coverage and humanitarian commitment; this includes both the local Chadian population and a Darfuri refugee population that now reaches more than 1.3 million. The number of refugees by December 2026 is expected by UNHCR to reach 1.5 million. The scale of the crisis, the ongoing insecurity created by war in Sudan, and international cutbacks to humanitarian funding (especially by the Trump administration) have created catastrophic conditions.
Reports from humanitarians have not been in short supply as the crisis deepens, and the most telling findings are summarized here, augmented by reports over the past year from reliable sources on the ground.
Some camps (e.g., Mile and Aboutengué) face particularly serious security threats, although the dangers from violence are everywhere, particularly sexual violence directed against girls and women. The skills of Team Zamzam’s counselors are being put to a severe test.
The region has seen a general breakdown in social cohesion and reliable infrastructure, ensuring that water—to take but one example—is in short supply or unavailable in or near many camp locations. The effect is to force girls and women to travel dangerous distances to fetch water for drinking and cooking.
[ If the situation demands it, and construction/rehabilitation is possible, Team Zamzam again will oversee creation of a new water point in Mayba; nine were created during the time the Team was in Zamzam IDP camp. ]
Many observers feel that it is imperative that a vigorous protective force of some sort be deployed rapidly to the most dangerous areas near the border to deter violence, wherever it originates. The Chadian authorities have made it all too clear that they are not up to the task, part of their general neglect of this impoverished and underserved region. Notable is the geography of eastern Chad: it is harsh, poorly served by roads, with traditional ethnic boundaries overwhelmed by the number of refugees. It is also very dry, and arable land is in short supply.
The shortage of food varies from camp to camp, but there have been serious and extended interruptions of deliveries to a number of camps; all refugee populations are confronting the UN’s 50% cut in food rations. Beyond this, as noted above, there is no clear evidence that UNHCR has pre-positioned food for a vast population that continues to grow at an extremely rapid rate. Without the prepositioning of food—given the appalling conditions of some dirt roads during the rainy season—interruptions in deliveries will grow terrifyingly. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), virtually all the area in which the camps are located already experience malnutrition at IPC Level 3 (“Crisis!”).
Health conditions are exceedingly poor, exacerbated by a gross lack of adequate medical supplies. Given the enormous, and growing, population of acutely malnourished children, mortality during the coming months may be extremely high. Even basic shelter is often lacking, forcing people to live in the open, compounding health risks. The psychological stress created by overcrowding, inadequate aid provision, and ethnic friction makes for a highly unstable situation. The instability often translates into violence.
Most humanitarian observers view the crisis as one of ongoing strategic mismanagement—the failure to move beyond ad hoc solutions to an extremely complex humanitarian crisis that demands a well-coordinated effort by all parties; the lack of adequate funding emerges again and again as a root cause in the overall failure. A short-term approach to the developing catastrophe makes no sense, and the humanitarian community as a whole increasingly feels as though eastern Chad has become a sideshow when in fact it is among the very greatest scenes of human suffering in the world, with mortality poised to explode in the coming months.
Team Zamzam provides a good deal of the information provided here, and they quite realize the enormity of the challenges they face. With our assistance they will be able to respond as they have for the past six years: with compassion, fortitude, determination, and a beautiful esprit de corps.
Their report for the previous month appears here.
I again take the opportunity to remind our supporters that it is now possible to make a tax-deductible contribution to our project, using a portal on the website of a 501/c/3 organization operating in Sudan. Operation Broken Silence, our fiscal partner, works primarily on health and education issues in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan; OBS has created a special site for tax-deductible contributions to our project, and we hope this makes contributing to the health and well-being of the people served by Team Zamzam easier for donors.
Another way to support Team Zamzam: every woodturning has two stories!
