Chad: Socioeconomic profiling of Sudanese, Central African et Nigerian refugees

1- Background and rationale

Chad has been welcoming Sudanese refugees fleeing violence in the Darfur region for more than 10 years. Security and political conditions are still not conducive to a return to their home country.
At the same time, overall insecurity prevails in Central African Republic impeding the repatriation of thousands of C.A.R. refugees and returnees living in Southern Chad. The prolonged presence of refugees in Chad and the continuous reduction in available funding for food and non-food assistance, have led the humanitarian community to reconsider the type of interventions in place. Between 2014 and 2015, WFP and UNHCR conducted a socio-economic categorization in refugee camps in Southern and South-eastern parts of the country with the strong involvement of CNARR (Government agency for refugees and returnees). Based on lessons learned from that approach, the 2016 Joint Assessment Mission (JAM) recommended an update in 2017. The current exercise was designed to go beyond a simple categorization and thus identify refugee household that can be empowered in the short to medium term as well as factors that can enable self-reliance. The results of profiling should be used to develop a new strategic needs-based approach. During the exercise, the technical teams decided to include in the analysis Nigerian and Central Africans refugees who arrived more recently but who may eventually face the same difficulties.

2- Key figures

• Initial data collection was conducted between 17 June and 15 July 2017. An additional round for Central African refugees installed in host villages in southern Chad was organized from 25 July to 4 August 2017.

• 544 officers including 435 interviewers ensured data collection; supervision and data quality check was provided by the staff of CNARR, UNHCR and WFP;.

• 19 camps and 9 host villages were visited by data collection teams.

• 87,725 households were interviewed using the socio-economic questionnaire.

• 18 checklists were filled with programme officers, cooperating partners, local authorities and managers of basic services in camps.

• 30 focus groups (30 more to be received) were prepared with refugee leaders and representatives of women and youth.

• Individual information was collected from 356 684 persons.

• Data collection was done using smartphones (no trees were felled to support this operation).