Global Report on Internal Displacement 2025

Regional Overviews

Sub-Saharan Africa: Spotlight - Chad (Part 7)
Chad is the world’s most vulnerable country to climate change, and internal displacement is becoming one of its most visible impacts. The country was still recovering from devastating flooding in 2022 when it was hit by the worst floods in decades in the second half of 2024. They triggered more than 1.3 million internal displacements, by far the highest disaster displacement figure on record for the country and more than in the previous 15 years combined. The disaster left nearly 1.2 million people living in displacement as of the end of the year.

Several factors explain the extent of the devastation the disaster wrought. Above-average rainfall across the country during the rainy season inundated more than 13.9 million hectares of land, including 1.9 million hectares of cropland, undermining the livelihoods of thousands of people who relied on rainfed agriculture and forcing them to flee. The floods also worsened food insecurity because they took place at a critical time in the planting season for staple crops including maize, rice, millet and sorghum.

Roads were submerged, damaged or destroyed, hampering the delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid to vulnerable groups, including internally displaced women and children, who were among the worst affected. Large areas of the country were underwater for days and in some cases weeks, contaminating water sources and heightening the risk of waterborne diseases.

Food insecurity and water and sanitation challenges were already on the rise in the east of the country before the floods, which damaged and destroyed shelters and other facilities for the displaced, aggravating further an existing health crisis.

Internal displacement took place across nearly all 23 of the country’s provinces, but Mandoul, Mayo Kebbi Est, Borkou and Lac accounted for more than half of all the movements reported. Nearly 218,000 homes had been destroyed across the country as of 1 October, prolonging the plight of many of those displaced. 

Urban areas were not spared. In the capital, N’Djamena, the Logone river was at its highest level in more than 30 years, reaching more than eight metres in early October. Thanks to previous investments in water management 57,000 displacements were recorded there, more than a quarter of those recorded in 2022.

The extent of the floods prompted the government to issue a decree in early August setting up a National Committee for Flood Prevention and Management tasked with coordinating humanitarian response efforts. The International Charter Space and Major Disasters was also activated for the country in the same month, providing satellite imagery to inform aid operations. Several government institutions and humanitarian organisations conducted assessments across the country, which helped to identify IDPs’ most pressing needs. 

As the floods persisted during the following weeks, the Humanitarian Country Team activated the Anticipatory Action Framework to mitigate their impacts and allocated further funding to prevent the crisis from worsening.

Policy Developments
The floods that Chad experienced in 2024 are another reminder of the importance of establishing and implementing policies to build resilience to disasters and the effects of climate change, including the prevention of displacement. Insufficient human and financial capacities are persisting challenges, but the country has made some progress in recent years.

Based on a 2015 assessment that high-lighted the need to strengthen disaster risk management, the government developed a National Disaster Risk Reduction Strategy and Plan of Action in 2020. The country’s first National Climate Change Adaptation Plan was published two years later. 

The government also put forward legal and policy frameworks on internal displacement in 2023, notably a law for the protection and assistance of IDPs and a decree setting up an inter-ministerial committee on durable solutions. Both instruments include provisions to prevent, respond to and resolve conflict and disaster displacement, and they clarify institutional roles and responsibilities. They will be key to guiding government efforts to address both phenomena.
 
Having comprehensive data on the scope and scale of displacement will be critical to inform policymaking but remains an important gap. Indeed, estimates are obtained using housing destruction as a proxy, hampering a full understanding of the impacts and duration of displacement and how different initiatives to support IDPs are being successful in helping them achieve a durable solution.

Global Report on Internal Displacement 2025. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Norwegian Refugee Council. Geneva, Switzerland.