Source: AlertNet

U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland recently highlighted how aid agencies have received only 16 percent of the funds they need to help a quarter of a million refugees and internally displaced people living in camps in Chad.

Gabriela Matthews, a freelance Reuters journalist who visited Chad a few weeks ago, reports on the camps that are running on empty.

I spent a week filming in south Chad, where the funding situation is particularly acute. Renewed violence in northern Central African Republic (CAR) meant the small U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) team in Gore had been working flat out bringing people in from the border.

"It hasn't stopped for six months now," Stella, the protection officer tells me on our way to the border. We are on our way to the village of Beddakkoussang, where around 2,500 more people are reported to be sheltering under mango trees and in bushes, with nothing but mangoes to eat and no medication. They are also putting a strain on the village's water supply.

They've been there a month - which seems an enormous amount of time - so I ask why they haven't been brought into the camp earlier. "We've only just finished transferring around 2,000 people from Bekoninga two days ago," Stella tells me. "I'm the only protection officer, and we have a limited amount of trucks. We don't have the resources to go any quicker."

INDISCRIMINATE SHOOTING

On the border we're met by a sea of people, many of them children. I hear stories of massacres, executions, indiscriminate shooting of civilians, and the CAR army rounding up men and killing them point-blank. The army is said to justify the shootings as punishment for the villager's alleged support for rebels. Some people tell me they're just the "wrong" tribe.

"I was very surprised, just out of nowhere people with guns came out, and started to shoot at everything that moved, so we were all in shock," explains Alisa Betam.

MSF Holland is the only humanitarian agency operating in Northern CAR. A chat with Helmut, the coordinator, confirms what I had just heard. When he visited the mobile clinics there, he saw burnt villages and people running scared at the sound of a vehicle.

At the time, he estimated around 15,000 people were still hiding in the forests in northern CAR, too scared either to go back to their villages or cross into Chad. "These people, they will have to go somewhere eventually, and if the situation in CAR carries on as it is, they will have no choice but to come here."

Already scraping the bottom of the funding barrel, another 15,000 potential refugees is something of a worry.

LACK OF RESOURCES

"These people don't just need safety, but also humanitarian aid, which we don't have the resources to give them," says Georges Meneze, who heads up UNHCR in the area. "It's an urgent situation, because our resources are much lower than what's actually needed."

The more time I spend here, the more I hear about how the money that is being spent is actually borrowed from funds earmarked for the east of the country.

Amboko camp holds 28,000 people, and was built three years ago. The refugees have mud huts and smallholdings, making it look more like a village. Some even have land given to them by the Chadian government.

In an effort to make them self-sufficient and ease the burden on humanitarian agencies, the International Labour Organization is encouraging people, wherever possible, to continue with the job or trade they had back home.

This is in striking contrast to the Amboko extension, where new refugees are being brought in. Here the tents are little more than 3 feet (91.4 cm) apart and hundreds of people live squashed together.

SOAP SHORTAGE

"I am very worried about the situation with these new refugees," Helmut, the MSF Holland coordinator for south Chad, tells a meeting I'm allowed to attend. "According to health advisories, we shouldn't have more than a maximum 50 or so people to a latrine. We actually have more than 80 - and that where there are any latrines."

The meeting highlights many problems. The World Food Programme reinforces that there's going to be a cut in rations; there's talk about the lack of soap, and when the next delivery will be.

Three hundred more people are brought in the next day from the border, and at least another 1,500 are still waiting to come.

I bump into Laura, an MSF nurse. She's just finished vaccinating the new arrivals. "There is not even enough soap," she tells me. "The last distribution or two have been missed, and even when soap is distributed, only half of the rations are given out.

"We're told there just isn't any. We go from tent to tent telling people they have to wash and use soap, particularly as it's so crowded, and quite rightly they come to us saying: well, how can I wash my hands and use soap, when I don't have any, and I can't afford to buy it?"

Laura looks around at all the faces staring at us, and smiles at everyone. She doesn't let her worries spill over to the refugees.

I find a higher spot, and climb up to get a better view of the camp. Everywhere you look, there's just a mass of tents. As a woman, I can't image where I'd hide away to have a wash, even if I did have the soap.

TRAPPED IN LIMBO

A week later, during my trip to the eastern border with Darfur, I visit Bahai. Most of the refugees here are from the Sudanese Zaghawa community, and are entirely dependent on the United Nations.

Mark Emerrett, the coordinator for French NGO ACTED, voices everyone's fears: "We hear reports from Geneva, from N'Djamena, that funding will be further reduced later this year and in 2007, so we are very concerned about the refugees and the local population.

"Without that continued funding, it's going to be a crisis - particularly here where the climate is really harsh, and there is very little rainfall and no vegetation in sight for the refugees to be able to become self-sufficient."

Internationally there's a lot of interest in Darfur. All the talk about human rights abuses and the need to resolve the conflict is at odds with the lack of funding for those driven out by the violence.

"It seems there is less and less interest in Chad," Mark tells me. "And the impact of the instability in Sudan is such that the Sudanese refugees will not go back. They tell us they are too scared to go back until an international force goes into Darfur."

The peace agreement recently signed in Abuja looks like a first step in the right direction. But whatever happens, it's going to be months, if not years, before any semblance of peace will be restored in Darfur.

There are around 200,000 Sudanese refugees sheltering in Chad. And while all eyes are on Darfur, they remain trapped in limbo between a country they've been chased out of, and another that's less and less able to support them.