Baga Sola, Chad
Wednesday, August 13, 2025

By Boris Bolomey –

Ahmat Moussa’s life was turned upside down nine months ago. In the middle of the night, Balangoura, an isolated village on Lake Chad in the west of the country of the same name, was surrounded and then attacked by the jihadist group Boko Haram.
“I heard the first shots and left without looking back,” says the 42-year-old fisherman, pointing to the scar left by a Kalashnikov bullet on his right leg. One of his sons, aged 16, was kidnapped that night.
The horror story continues with his neighbor, Baya Ali Moussa. She also fled Balangoura that evening. The body of one of her sons, aged 23, was found three days later, floating among the water hyacinths.
For the past 15 years, Boko Haram has been terrorizing the populations of the Lake Chad basin, which borders three other countries (Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria). Founded in Nigeria in the early 2000s, it made global headlines at its peak from 2013 to 2015, after kidnapping nearly 300 schoolgirls in Chibok (north).
The terrorists have lost ground in the face of regular military offensives, but they remain a threat, as illustrated by the recurrence of kidnappings, executions, rapes, and looting.
In Chad, the Lac province has more than 250,000 displaced persons, according to the UN.

“Nothing to eat, nothing to drink”

Baya Ali Moussa and Ahmat Moussa, along with some 2,000 others, have taken refuge in Yakoua, about 20 kilometers from Bol, on the banks of a branch of the lake. “Here, we have nothing to eat or drink. We survive only thanks to community solidarity and humanitarian aid,” insists Baya Ali Moussa.
To help them, the NGO Acted has launched the “RRM” (Rapid Response Mechanism) in Yakoua to provide emergency aid to displaced persons for three months.
In one year, 46 sites have been identified in this context in Lac province.
“The attacks continue, the kidnappings continue, the displacement sites are turning into villages, but the humanitarian enthusiasm we saw from 2015 to 2019 has waned,” laments Togoum Atikang, RRM project manager at Acted.
“Some donors are stopping their funding,” he continues. And he sounds the alarm: “Where we withdraw, the population will suffer even more!”
“We have to cut back”
In Lac, the first effects of the freeze on US humanitarian aid funding, as well as cuts in funding from European donors, are being felt.
As the leading financial partner of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the United States provides half of the funding, followed by Europe. “With funding declining, we have to cut back,” says Alexandre Le Cuziat, deputy director of the WFP in Chad.

In early July, the WFP suspended its air service between N’Djamena and Bol. The journey, which took less than an hour by air, will now have to be made by road, taking a whole day on an unsafe route.
The WFP and UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, are also closing offices in Lac. “The freeze on US funding has affected about 7% of humanitarian assistance here in Chad since January,” notes François Batalingaya, UN humanitarian coordinator in Chad. “But the problem is that we have no perspective on the rest of the year. ”
He fears that “NGOs will start leaving in October.” The funding rate for the humanitarian response plan for Chad “is only 11% of the $1.45 billion required,” he points out. “At the same time last year, it was 34%.”
In addition to this global context affecting Chad at the national level, priority has been given to the east of the country for emergency humanitarian aid for the past two years. The conflict that has been ravaging neighboring Sudan since April 2023 has led more than a million Sudanese to seek refuge in neighboring Chad.
“Lake Chad is no longer the focus of global attention,” says François Batalingaya with concern: “If we forget the people of the region, there will be more displaced persons and more people will join these groups.”

Humaniterre with AFP