A world of women: Portraits from a refugee camp where the men are missing

Awatif Zakariya Ahmad crossed into Chad on September 20, 2024, her five children in tow. All their belongings were in a bag she balanced on her head and a smaller one in her hand.

They had traveled for three days, mostly on foot. One of her children didn’t have shoes.

She does not know where her husband is. One day in the summer of 2023, a few months after civil war broke out between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Ahmad’s husband left the house on an errand and never returned.

The RSF evolved from the Janjaweed, a largely Arab militia group that committed atrocities in the Darfur region to the west of Sudan in a genocide 20 years ago. The Masalit are Black Africans.

In September, NPR photographer Claire Harbage and I spent a week talking to more than two dozen women in several refugee camps in Chad, now home to over 600,000 who've fled Sudan. The women we interviewed said that the grown men in their family — husband, father, adult sons, brothers — were almost always missing.

Where are the men?

Ahmad and other refugees are part of Sudan’s Muslim Masalit population — a Black African tribe of an estimated half a million or more that has been targeted by RSF forces in a civil war that pits two generals against each other. The civil war itself is not an ethnic conflict; but refugees as well as experts on Sudan say the RSF, which evolved from a largely Arab militia group that committed atrocities in the country in a genocide 20 years ago, is conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign in areas they control in Darfur, where most of the refugees in Chad came from.

The women we interviewed said their male family members either disappeared, as Ahmad’s husband did; were killed by the RSF to prevent them from defending themselves and their families; or were conscripted by the Sudanese army. The conflict has created what the United Nations is calling the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with over 13 million displaced people. And it has created an extraordinary demographic in refugee camps in Chad.

In Adre, a border town in Chad where we spent two days, there are currently 215,000 Sudanese refugees living in makeshift tents, many from the Masalit population. Niyongabo Valery, who works for the U.N refugee agency UNHCR, says their surveys show that 97% of these displaced people are women and children.

“The Sudanese civil war has created a crisis of women and children,” says Edouard Ngoy, the Chad country director for World Vision, adding that in his 20-year career as a humanitarian worker, he had never seen a gender gap so stark among a refugee population.

Even as they mourn the loss of male family members, the refugee women are faced with unprecedented challenges. Raised in a patriarchal society, where men typically provide for the family and ensure their safety, they are now thrust into the role of head of family. They must find shelter, food, medicine and schooling for their children. But the sheer number of refugees has sparked a crisis in which these critical services are often not available.

Some of the women find ways to earn money — going outside the camp into fields to gather twigs they hope to sell to new arrivals to use as they erect tents. But few people have money to buy the twigs. And there are no jobs in this farming area.

Of the women we spoke to, some said they found comfort in friendships formed with other refugee women. Few said they hold any hope for a better future.

These women were eager to share their stories. Yet the toll of their experience was evident. They often spoke in a monotone and with blank expression as they recounted the violence that took the lives of many men and boys as well as the assault and rape of women and girls they had witnessed.

Here are their stories.

Awatif Zakariya Ahmad: No idea where her husband is

Since her husband disappeared over a year ago, Ahmad has been the sole caretaker of her children. Her husband had been the breadwinner. With Sudan’s economy and agriculture ravaged by war, she could not find work and struggled to feed her children.

She and her children spent months traveling to several towns in search of her husband. “I have no idea where he is, he could be dead, he could be detained,” she says.

When she ran out of hope and money for food, she set out for Chad.

But conditions in Chad weren’t much better. Once Ahmad crossed the border, she walked another hour to the refugee settlement in Adre — a seemingly endless sea of tents made of plastic tarp, mosquito nets and sticks. Spokespeople for the U.N. and World Vision said they did not have enough funding to distribute food, cash or other basics.

On their first night in Chad, Ahmad and her children slept outside on the dirt. They had no food for dinner or breakfast the next morning, but she had found a new friend, another Sudanese woman who had recently crossed into Chad with her children. The two families huddled together on the bare ground, waiting, hoping that help would come — and soon realized they were on their own.

Khadijah Muhammad Omar: She still has nightmares

Khadijah Muhammad Omar says she led a happy life with her husband and four children in Geneina, a city in West Darfur. The city became a battlefield in April 2023 and by June had fallen under RSF control.

Omar said she and her sister witnessed mass killings where RSF soldiers rounded up men and boys over the age of 14 and shot them dead. She said soldiers came into the homes of some of her friends and neighbors, dragging the males out to kill them and raping the women and girls. With the largest Masalit population in Sudan — some 300,000 — the city of Geneina saw some of the worst of the atrocities, according to human rights groups.

More than a year since she made it to Chad, Omar still has nightmares. Tears flow down her face as she recounts those last days in Sudan.

“The RSF attacked us and pointed guns at us and ordered us to bring out our belongings so they could take them — and our husbands and brothers so they could kill them,” she says.

Even as families tried to escape, the men had to hide and take longer routes to avoid checkpoints on the main roads. Omar was never able to reunite with her husband and hasn’t heard from him since January 2024, when he was still hiding in Sudan.

“I’m ok, at least I got away from the war, but I worry about him every day. I’m trying to stay strong for my children,” she says.

Omar was pregnant when the war broke out. One day as she was walking on the street with another friend who was also pregnant, RSF soldiers stopped them at gunpoint, she said.

“They shouted at us ‘what is in your belly? Are you carrying money or a child?’” she recounts.

Then, she says, one of the soldiers ordered the women to take off their clothes. They roughly touched Omar and her friend’s bare stomachs, then let them go.

“It was terrifying and awful, but I had it relatively easy. They beat a lot of my friends and also raped them,” she says.

As they were fleeing to Chad, Omar says she and her children saw many dead bodies on the roads, mostly men. At RSF checkpoints, she says the soldiers stole their meager belongings, including her phone, leaving them only with the clothes on their backs.

“This war makes no sense and it needs to stop and Sudan needs to be safe and secure, so that we can take our kids back and they can get a good education, become doctors, engineers and help fix their country,” Omar says.

Fatima Ibraheem Hammad: "I like being alive"

Fatima Ibraheem Hammad says she begged for money from everyone she knew to help her with food and the cost of car rides as she left Sudan. That was the summer of 2023, after the RSF killed her two sons and her husband and took all of their belongings.

“They drove us out, they kicked us out, because we are Masalit. But I left because I didn’t want to die, I like being alive,” she adds with a cheeky smile.

With no surviving children, she took her grandchildren and escaped to Chad. They have been living in Adre for about a year. In that time, she said she has only received food distributions twice.

“We are safe but hungry,” she says.

Zahra Isa Ali: "The injustice ... eats at me"

Zahra Isa Ali says her husband was shot and killed in front of her and her two daughters in June 2023.

She said a group of RSF soldiers barged into their house in their hometown of Geneina and demanded to know if they were part of the Masalit tribe. She and her husband answered yes. The soldiers shot him in the chest and in the head, she says — and began to hurl insults at her and her children, calling them slaves and beating them.

She says the leader of the group dragged the family and their neighbors outside and told them they would kill anyone who is Black, even shooting a black donkey. Looking back, Ali has no regrets about the answer they gave — even though she knew their response would put their lives in danger: "We would never deny who we are. We are from the Masalit tribe.”

Now in Farchana, a town in Chad, living in a tent made of twigs and tarp, Ali and her daughters face a daily struggle to find food. The family said they received a cash distribution from the World Food Programme six months ago but ran out of money quickly, as food prices have gone up across Chad.

Ali and her daughters are haunted by what they saw in Sudan.

“It’s genocide,” Ali says. “The injustice of it all eats at me. Why is no one intervening to stop this war?”