April 2023 marked two years since Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno seized power and declared himself head of the Transitional Military Council (Conseil Militaire de Transition, CMT) following the sudden death of his father, Idriss Déby Itno, president of Chad since 1990. A new draft constitution proposed by the transitional government was adopted in June by 96 percent of the members of the National Transitional Council (Conseil National de Transition, CNT), which replaced the National Assembly when it was dissolved after Idriss Déby Itno’s death. A public referendum on the new constitution was scheduled for December at time of writing. Presidential elections are scheduled for 2024.
Rebel movements in the far north remained active as did tensions in the north between the transitional government and the Miski self-defense group, despite a peace agreement signed in January.
Another rebel group emerged in the south in early 2023 along the border with the Central African Republic. In January, the governor of the southern Logone Oriental province confirmed the existence of this rebel group, declaring it “must be defeated.” The group’s emergence coincided with an uptick in violent clashes between herder and farmer communities in the south.
To date, there has been no accountability for the violent crackdown on October 20, 2022, against protests in several cities across the country, that resulted in the killing and injury of scores of people. An investigation by the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), one of eight African Union regional economic communities, has yet to be published.
At least 72 party members and supporters of Les Transformateurs, an opposition party, were arrested in October and held for 3 weeks at the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service before being released. The party members were exercising in the early morning before a meeting in preparation for the return of Succès Masra, the party’s president, who left the country after the crackdown on October 20, 2022. Masra returned to the country in early November after his safe return was negotiated in Kinshasa, Congo.
Fighting in Sudan, which started in April between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), triggered massive displacement of people and resulted in more than 420,000 Sudanese refugees seeking safety in Chad. This added to an estimated 580,000 refugees and asylum seekers already in the country and strained an already underfunded humanitarian response.
Aftermath of the October 20, 2022 Protests
In October 2022, thousands took to the streets in the capital N’Djamena and towns in the south in protest to mark the date the military administration had initially promised to hand over power to a civilian government. The transitional government had on several previous occasions violently suppressed protests demanding civilian democratic rule.
In a February report, the National Human Rights Commission said that 128 people were killed and 518 injured. The commission found that security forces “systematically violated several fundamental human rights … [using] disproportionate means” to quell the protests. The commission posed several questions to the government, including why authorities had failed to open judicial investigations into human rights violations and called for the prosecution of perpetrators of those violations.
In November 2022, the minister of justice said that 621 people had been arrested in relation to the protests, including 83 children. In November and December 2022, group trials of 401 of those arrested began at Koro Toro, a high security prison 600 kilometers from N’Djamena designed to house so-called violent extremists. A total of 262 people were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 24 to 36 months on several charges, including taking part in an unauthorized gathering, destroying property, arson, and disturbing public order. Eighty people were given suspended prison sentences and another fifty-nine were acquitted. In December 2022, 80 children were released on bail. The majority of protestors were subsequently pardoned and released in groups over the course of 2023.
In the days following the violence, the ECCAS announced an investigation commission. The commission has yet to publish its report.
Violence in the South
Violent clashes, attributed to conflicts between herders and sedentary farmers, increased in the south.
In April, at least 23 people around Monts de Lam, Logone Oriental province, were killed in less than 48 hours, according to media reports. On May 8, at least 17 people were killed when unidentified gunmen attacked the village of Dion. On May 17, 11 people were killed by what the government called “bandits” in the same region. Many of the victims were young children.
Retaliatory killings continued through September around Monts de Lam.
Islamist Armed Groups
The Islamist armed groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) continued to carry out attacks against civilians in the Lake Chad area.
Chad has provided military contributions to regional counterterrorism operations In the Sahel for years. In November 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron declared the end of Operation Barkhane, the French-led counterinsurgency operation against Islamist armed groups in the Sahel, and headquartered in N’Djamena. Chad contributed the third-highest number of troops to the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), which the UN Security Council ended in June. MINUSMA was scheduled to leave the country by the end of 2023.
The future of the G5 Sahel, a joint counterterrorism force including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, was put in doubt as Burkina Faso and Niger announced their intentions to leave the group after Mali exited the group in 2022.
Constitutional Reform
The 2021 creation of the Transitional Military Council (CMT) and the National Transitional Council (CNT) was in blatant contravention of a constitutional requirement that leadership should be transferred to the president of the National Assembly until elections can be held. A national dialogue in 2022—deemed non inclusive by political opposition and civil society actors—adopted a measure to extend the transition for a maximum of 24 months. Delegates decided that Mahamat Déby would remain interim head of state. Over the course of 2023, transitional authorities pushed forward with a constitutional referendum despite calls for political inclusion and dialogue from political and civil actors.
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Article 354 of the 2017 Penal Code prohibits “sexual relations with a person of one’s own sex.” Under the code, individuals convicted of same-sex relations face up to 2 years’ imprisonment and a fine of between 50,000 to 500,000 CFA francs (approximately US$75-750).
Economic and Social Rights
According to the World Food Programme, Chad has one of the highest levels of hunger in the world: an estimated 42 percent of the population lives in poverty, and over 37 percent of children aged under 5 suffer from stunting.
Millions remain affected by underinvestment in social security while climate change and desertification negatively impact agricultural yields.
Displacement
As of early October, over 420,000 Sudanese refugees had fled into eastern Chad since the start of the crisis in Sudan. Before this, an estimated 1.9 million people in Chad’s eastern provinces already needed humanitarian assistance, with malnutrition rates exceeding the WHO's critical threshold in several places.
International Justice
There was no compensation given to victims of former President Hissène Habré, who died of Covid-19 in August 2021 while serving a life sentence. Habré had been convicted of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and torture on May 30, 2016. His crimes included sexual violence, including rape and the sexual slavery of women to serve his soldiers.
In September 2022, the Chadian government announced the release of 10 billion FCFA ($16 million) to compensate victims and survivors of Habré-era abuses. In May, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno told a victims’ group delegation that he had asked the finance minister to make Chad’s contribution available to victims, but the government took no subsequent action. The government also did not comply with a ruling from a Chadian court ordering additional compensation for victims as well as the creation of a monument to honor those killed under Habré and a museum in the former political police headquarters where detainees were tortured.
Although the African Union had allocated $5 million to a trust fund for the victims in 2017 in line with the Senegal appellate court’s order, the fund has yet to begin work.
Key International Actors
In September, media reported that the United Arab Emirates sent arms to the Rapid Support Forces militia in Darfur, in violation of a UN arms embargo, via an airstrip in eastern Chad.