MSF Report Details 59 Allegations of Staff Abuse Against Chad Refugees; 18 Workers Dismissed

Doctors Without Borders completed an internal report last July documenting 59 allegations of abuse by its local and foreign staff against refugees in Chad. The Associated Press first reported the findings on Saturday. The organisation dismissed and barred from future employment 18 staff members after the allegations.

MSF began its investigation in 2024 following an earlier AP report published in November 2024 that described aid workers and local security forces offering jobs and assistance in exchange for sex. The internal report found cases where female refugees, including underage girls, were prostituted by staff.

In one documented case, seven refugee girls hired as daily workers were taken in an MSF vehicle to a location different from the stated water distribution and construction sites and exposed to sexual abuse and requests for sex.

Some survivors remained silent during investigations due to fear of jeopardising access to aid. Some survivors who spoke up did not receive help afterwards. MSF could not trace every person involved due to the scale of the refugee crisis and movement of people.

The organisation acknowledged that it had allocated extra resources in Chad for abuse prevention and staff training, but stated those measures did not have a lasting impact. MSF is improving its abuse prevention and detection methods, including through confidential reporting channels. The organisation employs tens of thousands of workers, local and foreign, across dozens of countries.

MSF is one of the biggest organisations responding to the refugee crisis in Chad. Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese have been displaced into eastern Chad amid a civil war in its fourth year in which thousands have been killed. Similar allegations of abuse by MSF staff were raised during the 2021 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.