An internal report by the relief organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has found that local and international staff exploited refugees in Chad, sometimes targeting teenage girls, and other times trading relief food and jobs for sex.
The report was completed last July but first published by the Associated Press on Saturday. The organization recorded 59 allegations of abuse, though it believes the actual number may be higher because survivors are reluctant to speak out. As a result, 18 local and international staff were fired and banned from future work.
The internal investigation followed an AP probe released in November 2024, which revealed that Sudanese women refugees in Chad had been lured by relief workers and local security forces with jobs and support in exchange for sex.
Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese have fled to eastern Chad amid a brutal civil war now entering its fourth year. Thousands have died in the conflict.
In refugee camps in Chad, MSF is one of the largest organizations responding to the crisis. In the internal report, the organization noted that it had allocated additional resources in Chad to prevent and combat abuse, including staff training, but those measures had no lasting effect.
MSF said its findings were ‘a frank internal analysis’ of where its systems failed. The 59 allegations of misconduct ranged from sexual harassment to exploitation and abuse, ‘representing a serious violation of MSF’s values and responsibilities, and we deeply regret the harm caused’.
MSF said it launched the investigation in 2024 and found that Sudanese refugees, as well as some Chadian MSF staff, had been exploited and abused. The organization said it found cases of refugee women, including teenage girls, being forced into prostitution.
In one incident, seven refugee girls, reportedly hired as daily workers, were loaded onto an MSF vehicle and told they would be taken to water distribution points and construction sites. Instead, the girls were taken to a different location and ‘exposed to’ sexual abuse and demands for sex, according to the report.
During the investigation, some survivors chose to remain silent for fear of affecting their access to aid. Those who spoke out in some cases received no help afterward, the report said.
MSF, which employs tens of thousands of people in dozens of countries, said in the report that it could not trace every individual involved because of the scale of the refugee crisis and population movement. The organization said it is improving methods to prevent and detect abuse, including through confidential reporting channels.
Similar allegations have been made in the past, MSF said, including during the 2021 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
