I am writing from Bahai, a village in eastern Chad right on the border with Darfur. Camilla Olson and I have trekked all the way out here, to what may be the most remote place I have ever visited, to understand the dynamics that make humanitarian assistance so hard to deliver. 

On the face of it Chad is not a humanitarian emergency. A crisis, yes, but the emergency phase has long passed and international humanitarian actors have the situation under some kind of control. Still, the challenges of delivering protection and assistance in this desolate place are enormous.

Bahai, or more specifically, Oure Cassoni refugee camp nearby, encapsulates all of the challenges that aid workers face in Chad. There is a huge refugee population and weak local and regional infrastructure, which together mean that the logistical hurdles are tremendous. However, it is the political interests and high-level meddling that create the real challenges here. 

Oure Cassoni is just 5 km away from the border and houses many wives and children of Sudanese rebels among the 27,000 refugees.  Members of the rebel group, the Justice for Equality Movement (JEM) are often in the camp, along with their weapons and all the political baggage that they bring. They are known to use the refugees as one of their key sources of new recruits.  Child recruitment is a particular problem.  

The threat of weapons and recruitment in the camp could be significantly reduced simply by moving the camp further away from the border. International standards call for refugee camps to be located 50km from international borders for precisely these reasons, but the government of Chad – and in particular President Deby – won’t allow it.  JEM rebels are key allies of the President, and the camp will stay put just as long is it is beneficial for them to have it here. 

If you pull your focus away to look at the bigger picture, a similar pattern can be seen throughout eastern Chad. Delivering aid to the 312,000 refugees and 166,000 internally displaced people in this part of the country would always have been a challenge. But the insecurity, ‘banditry’ and impunity -- and the grievances that underpin the ongoing rebel insurgency -- are political at their root. It is political interests and trade-offs that prevent any meaningful resolutions here. 

In 2008, the European Union deployed a peacekeeping force to eastern Chad to protect refugee camps and IDP sites, and to help humanitarian agencies to deliver aid in safety.  In January of this year, the UN Security Council authorized a UN force to replace the EU soldiers, and to train and mentor a Chadian police detachment (the Détachement Intègre de Sécurité) to maintain law and order within the camps and sites. The mission includes Human Rights offices, judicial advisers, UN police, military peacekeepers and civil affairs specialists.  

What the mission lacks is the one thing that is most needed in Chad: a mandate to bring about a political resolution to the grievances that underpin the instability here by engaging the government, armed groups and communities. The humanitarian emergency may well be over, but the international investment in aid and security in eastern Chad is only ever going to be a band-aid solution as long as the political source of this instability goes unaddressed.

-Erin A. Weir

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