Just 10 miles from a war zone, the Duchess of Edinburgh finds a ‘complete atrocity’

The Duchess reveals her distress after hearing about rape of women and children in African conflict

Tears streaming down her face, the Duchess of Edinburgh emerged from the makeshift clinic into the oven-like central African heat and stood on her own by the side of the tent for a few moments in order to compose herself.
Even for a seasoned campaigner against sexual violence, the testimony of the women at Adré District Hospital was too much to bear.
Minutes later, tears were still visible in her eyes as she described with quiet indignation the “complete atrocity” of the systematic rape being perpetrated against women in Sudan.
In a surprise visit to the troubled border, the Duchess said the suffering was “akin to Rwanda” in its brutality and warned that the conflict has “fallen from everybody’s consciousness”.
Her distress was visible as she met women who had been forced to have sex in order to feed their families, and who also described children being raped.
Others she met recalled bodies “stacked like a wall” on the streets of their villages as they escaped.
Amid tight security, The Telegraph travelled with the Duchess on Sunday to the vast refugee camp of Adré on the Chad-Sudan border, just over 10 miles from the site of recently reported fighting.
The nearby crossing with Sudan has been receiving up to 1,000 refugees a day in the last month, many of whom have travelled for weeks in temperatures of 40 degrees to get there.
The chaos has been caused by the civil war which broke out in April last year between the military government of Sudan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has inflamed the ethnic cleansing of black Africans in the Darfur region by the RSF-aligned Janjaweed militia.
The Duchess, who is the first member of the Royal family to visit Chad, held an intimate discussion at the hospital with women receiving support for trauma following sexual violence.
In an interview immediately after the meeting, she said the conversation had been “devastating” and added: “I daren’t even describe to you what they’ve been doing to children.
“People are having to exchange food and water for sex – for rape.
“That is violence that is being enacted through conflict; it is being used as a bargaining tool.
“These women have no option but to leave, and even then they’re lucky if some of them can get away because some of the villages and towns that they come from people can’t even leave their houses any more.
“If they leave their houses they get killed.”
She recalled meeting a woman at the Unicef refugee registration tent who had crossed the border with five children.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said the Duchess. “You have no idea what they have been through.
“That little girl was so silent and it worried me because of what I’ve just heard now.
“It really worried me because I haven’t shared with you some of what they told me in there, which was why I was quite wobbly when I came in. What they have all witnessed is complete atrocity.”
Standing right on the border between Chad and Sudan earlier in the day, the Duchess had spoken to starving families as they crossed on pony-drawn carts.
One woman, Hadida Abdullah, who was clutching her nine-month-old baby Bayeena, said her family had travelled nearly 50 miles after being beaten off their land.
“We had to leave because we had nothing to eat,” she said.
A mother of two herself, the Duchess has become a vocal champion of women’s rights in conflict, and earlier this year visited victims of sexual violence in Ukraine.
However, she warned that the world’s focus should not be distracted from Sudan.
She said: “Our attention is being led by other conflicts, and that’s understandable.
“But this is a human catastrophe that is vast and Chad is having to pick up the pieces when it can ill afford to do so.”
She added: “Organisations are saying they are seeing budgets being pulled back and things like that because the money is being siphoned to go elsewhere.”
Asked how severe she believed the situation was, the Duchess said: “They are describing scenes that are akin to Rwanda.” 
During the 1994 genocide, 800,000 people are believed to have been killed, according to the UN, alongside the perpetration of systematic rape.
“I don’t think anyone’s really aware of it. We read statistics, but we don’t see the human stories.”
The Duchess discussed the indiscriminate slaughter taking place and those who escaped.
“I would say that they are the lucky ones to come out, and then they still have mountains to climb when they get here,” she said.
“This is not a perfect situation but Unicef is doing what they can.”
Formally known as the Adré Spontaneous Site, the refugee camp of straw and stick dwellings covered with tarpaulins is now thought to house around 230,000 people and is close to becoming full.
Most families have arrived in Chad without men.
“Of course, because either the men have been killed or they’re fighting or they’re elsewhere, they are making that journey alone, with what children they have left, because many of the children have been killed,” said the Duchess. “So it’s really bad.”
The Duchess was forced to take a few moments by the side of one of the medical tents to compose herself after a meeting with survivors.
One of the women she spoke to had crossed into Chad after fleeing Geneina, a city in Darfur that has witnessed some of the worst atrocities of the war, with approximately 15,000 people estimated to have been killed in the RSF ethnic cleansing campaign targeting the Masalit and other black populations.
Thousands were slaughtered in just a few days, according to reports, with witnesses also reporting mass torture, rape and looting.
Speaking with the help of a translator, the woman said her teenage sons and two brothers were taken away by the militia.
“If you tried to go out you can be killed,” she said. “More than 10 people were killed at a time.”
The refugees are being met and registered by the Chadian authorities. They are then sent on to inoculation tents, the nearby hospital and then out into the refugee camp to try to scratch an existence for themselves from whatever they can find and any available aid parcels.
The British Government is concerned that Sudan may close the border crossing next month, making the plight of refugees trying to get out of the country even more desperate.
The next nearest crossing to the north is around 124 miles away.
International observers are concerned that the conflict is becoming a proxy war for Middle East powers such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE to bolster their status in the region, lessening the chances of a foreseeable resolution.
The UAE has been widely accused of providing significant funding to the RSF forces, and a UN report in January found the accusations of providing military support to the group credible.
Sudan is seen as key to the Gulf state’s strategy of deepening its political and economic strength in Africa.
The Kingdom is the primary importer of Sudanese gold.
The Duchess said: “The numbers are enormous and there is no end to what is going on that we can see, and so the situation is only going to get worse.”
Wearing a blue skirt, a flower-patterned blouse and espadrille shoes, the Duchess met representatives from Plan International, a charity that is trying to provide psycho-social support to children and adolescent victims of the war.
Paulien Eboo, one of its leaders, said mobile protection units had been set up to try to identify refugees suffering from trauma.
The charity provides playtime for the younger victims, whereas the older ones are given support to help them rediscover the ability to form friendships and develop social networks.
Fatima Abaulgasim, 15, and Mayada Abdoulgadir Oumar, 13, were among the children taking part in a session witnessed by the Duchess.
“We are here but our situation is awful,” said Fatima. “We need support for education and support for healthcare.”
Mayada said: “Education here is zero. We need education.”