Night falls on a transit camp in Chad. Image: keystone
June 13, 2026, 8:32 p.mJune 13, 2026, 8:32 p.m
The aid organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has uncovered a serious pattern of sexual abuse among its own employees in Chad.
A confidential internal document provided to the news agency Associated Press (AP) contains 59 allegations – including sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse of female refugees. In several cases, underage girls were targeted. Food, water and jobs were offered in return for sex.
The incidents took place in displaced persons camps on the border with Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of people are seeking shelter fleeing the ongoing civil war. The report refers to a section of a refugee camp where employees are said to have specifically searched for girls.
Not just refugees
Community leaders, a kind of representative of the local community, responded with a curfew to prevent young girls from visiting MSF workers. In one particularly serious case, seven girls were taken to another location in an MSF vehicle under the pretext of a trip to the water distribution point, where they were allegedly subjected to sexual abuse.
A refugee camp set up for people fleeing the war in Sudan in Adre, Chad, on October 3, 2024.Image: keystone
Not only refugees, but also Chadian employees of the organization were affected. They were threatened with losing their jobs if they resisted sexual demands from superiors or colleagues. Many victims were reluctant to report the abuse for fear of losing their jobs or access to humanitarian assistance.
According to the report, half of a dozen community leaders said they did not report the abuse even though their own daughters or sisters were affected.
18 layoffs
The investigation was initiated in autumn 2024 after AP first reported on the allegations. 18 employees have now been laid off. In other cases, the allegations could not be verified or the alleged perpetrators could not be identified.
The AP cites urgent staffing needs and a lack of reference checks as contributing causes, which led to the hiring of people with a history of misconduct. The report recommends, among other things, stricter reference checks and a database for people who are banned from hiring. MSF acknowledged that similar allegations had arisen before – such as the Ebola outbreak in Congo in 2021 – and little had changed since then. The reported cases are a serious violation of MSF’s values, it said in a statement. (val)