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These Sudanese Refugees Fled War. Now, Crucial U.S. Aid Is Running Out.
Sudanese refugees at the Aboutengue Camp in Chad, most of whom are women and children, say they are desperate for help just weeks after the U.S. government announced drastic foreign aid cuts in January.
Fatehiyya Mohamed Adam is a Sudanese refugee who first fled war in 2023 and then lost everything after an accidental fire ripped through this refugee camp along the Chad-Sudan border. HIAS, a refugee advocacy N.G.O. that was poised to help her with emergency services, couldn’t after the U.S. government suspended its work in massive foreign aid cuts announced in January. We traveled to the remote Aboutengue Camp in Chad, where many of the resources for tens of thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, have come to a sudden halt. HIAS had been providing refugees with critical support. And while its work suspension was lifted in early March, it remains unclear which of its programs will continue to be funded and for how long. One woman who asked us to hide her identity for fear of retribution, told us how HIAS helped intervene after a domestic violence incident with her husband. She still lives here with her husband and toddler, and had been receiving family counseling from the N.G.O., which has had to freeze workers’ salaries and sessions for her and for other victims of gender-based violence. Almost everywhere in the Aboutengue Camp, we came across stories of people who rely heavily on U.S. foreign aid on a daily basis. Schools like this one, run by Jesuit Refugee Services, were a lifeline for more than 32,000 students like Kawsar Mahamat Yakub, before it abruptly had to close its doors in January. A month later, some of its teachers returned to volunteer or work for minimum pay, but more than half of the students were now gone, and it’s unclear how much longer the school will be able to keep its doors open. As of March, the Trump administration has eliminated 83 percent of U.S.A.I.D. programs and 40 percent of State Department grants, citing widespread waste and claiming they do not serve U.S. interests. The cuts total tens of billions in overall U.S. assistance worldwide.
March 18, 2025Updated 10:04 a.m. ET
U.S. foreign aid cuts impacting Sudanese refugees in Chad have reduced already razor-thin margins for lifesaving resources like food and water, and other U.S. government-funded programs including mental health counseling and education.
“When we told [the students] the decision, that we’re going to close the school, most of them were crying,” said Aballah Abakar Abdallah, a teacher at the only secondary school in Aboutengue refugee camp, near the border of Sudan.
The school, one of the few standing concrete structures in the camp of 45,000 refugees, was once funded by a grant from the U.S. State Department, through the Jesuit Refugee Services (J.R.S.). It was the largest provider of secondary school education to refugees fleeing the Darfur region of Sudan. J.R.S. said the cuts put the education of roughly 32,000 Sudanese refugee students at risk.
“There’s a lot of challenges, but we cannot really drop out of education because we have brothers in the battlefield,” said Abdulazeem Abdu Abaker, 18, who fled from El Geneina, Darfur, in 2023, and is now a student at the Aboutengue Secondary School. “That’s why we split, part of us in education, and part of us in the battlefield. If we drop out of education, that won’t help the success of our beloved country.”
Earlier this year, the United States accused the R.S.F. and its allied militias, a mostly ethnic Arab paramilitary force vying for control of the country, with committing acts of genocide against the non-Arab Masalit ethnic groups in Darfur.
The majority of the Sudanese refugees who have crossed the border and are living inside refugee camps in Chad are women and children, according to UNICEF, which has reported how gender-based violence is widespread in active conflict areas.
HIAS, a refugee advocacy nongovernmental organization operating in Aboutengue camp, had spent almost two years building trust in the refugee community so at-risk women could approach it with issues of domestic and gender-based violence, as well as in the aftermath of disasters for emergency help and funding.
The Trump administration’s stop-work order in January on all U.S. foreign aid-funded programs prevented HIAS from continuing to follow up on thousands of refugee protection cases. The organization said it recently received word that its stop-work order had been lifted, but it was unclear what programs would continue to be funded, and for how long.
HIAS, along with seven other groups, filed a lawsuit in February against the Trump administration, calling the executive order to halt all foreign aid assistance “unconstitutional,” and the withholding of billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated foreign-assistance funding “unlawful.” A federal judge ruled in favor of HIAS and the other plaintiffs, but HIAS has said the U.S. government has yet to fully comply.
