A Country Under Strain: Why Chad Faces Growing Risks of Mass Violence

Author: Elizabeth Lyons

March 11, 2026

Mahamat Idriss Déby is sworn in as Chad's transitional president in N'Djamena on October 10, 2022. [Image credit: Denis Sassou Gueipeur, AFP]

Chad’s political system has long been concentrated in the hands of the military, with few meaningful checks on the use of force or avenues for civilians to hold leaders accountable. Political transitions have been repeatedly resolved through coercion rather than constitutional processes, entrenching autocratic rule and undermining democratic institutions. This pattern was again evident in 2021, when President Idriss Déby Itno was killed in a rebel offensive. Rather than triggering a constitutional transfer of authority, his death was followed by the suspension of the constitution, and his son, Mahamat Idriss Déby, was installed as the head of a transitional military council (TMC). The move consolidated military control and stalled democratic processes.

Since then, conditions on the ground have continued to deteriorate. State security forces have responded to dissent with force, intercommunal violence has intensified in southern and central regions, and regional conflicts—particularly the war in neighboring Sudan—have exacerbated displacement and instability. This sustained ranking reflects a trajectory of escalating risk driven by militarized governance, unsolved grievances, and weakening civilian protections. Against this backdrop, Chad has ranked second on the Early Warning Project’s statistical assessment of countries at risk for intrastate mass killing for two consecutive years, after appearing near the top of the list in preceding assessments. 

Political Military Foundations of Risk

Political repression in Chad has intensified steadily since the military takeover in 2021, narrowing political space and weakening the mechanisms that might otherwise constrain violence. When the TMC assumed power, it presented itself as a temporary authority tasked with overseeing a transition and returning power to civilian rule. These commitments were a facade to seize power. 

Within months of assuming power, the TMC imposed a ban on demonstrations in the capital, N’Djamena. Peaceful protesters in April and May were met with lethal force, leaving at least seven deaths and more than 700 arrested. On Friday, May 7, 2021, the authorities indicated that they would show “goodwill” and would not oppose marches as long as they remained peaceful. This early use of lethal repression signaled that dissent would be treated as a security threat rather than a political grievance.

Repression escalated further in October 2022, when civilians protested the extension of the transitional government and were subsequently arrested on “Black Thursday.” Security forces responded with a violent crackdown in which an estimated 50-300 people were killed, and between 1,000 and 2,000 people were arrested. Dozens, possibly hundreds, have since disappeared. Multiple detainees died in custody while being transferred to Koro Toro prison, with survivors crammed into trucks without room even to turn around, being denied food and water. Rather than pursuing accountability, the authorities moved to shield the perpetrators: in 2023, the TMC passed an amnesty law barring prosecution of security forces for their role in lethal repression.

Open-source reporting and civil society accounts suggest that the suppression of protest has produced widespread fear and a perception that civilian mobilization is a security threat. Protestors and opposition supporters increasingly expect demonstrations to be met with force rather than dialogue, reinforcing the belief that political participation carries significant risk. These dynamics were consolidated through formal political processes that hollowed out democratic constraints. In 2024, Déby won the presidency of a highly contested election. In 2025, the Chadian Parliament approved amendments that extended the presidential term from 5 to 7 years and removed term limits, effectively allowing Déby to maintain power indefinitely. As a result, the prospect of democratic transfer of authority in Chad has become increasingly remote.

Opposition figures have been detained without warrants and charged with vague or politically motivated offenses, including complicity in assassination, “spreading racist and xenophobic content,” arson, desecration, and the formation of armed gangs. Several were imprisoned without fair trial, reinforcing a broader pattern in which legal institutions are used to suppress political competition. 

Although elections and political parties formally exist, they function primarily as instruments of regime legitimation. The ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement holds a dominant parliamentary majority (124 out of 188 seats), while key opposition movements, including Wakit Tama, boycotted the elections, disputing electoral credibility and transparency. In this context, formal political participation has a limited capacity to translate into institutional constraints on executive authority. 

Militarization of governance has also blurred the line between state authority and past armed violence. Mahamat Déby has appointed former rebel leaders to senior positions, including Abdel Kader Mahamat, also known as Baba Laddé, as head of intelligence. Mahamat has been accused of serious human rights crimes, such as rape, killing, and looting. Such appointments further undermine public trust in the state’s willingness or ability to protect civilians. Fragmented chains of command such as this reduce oversight and heighten the likelihood that security responses to unrest can escalate beyond central control.

Overall, these patterns reflect not episodic repression but the institutionalization of coercion as a governing strategy. Broken transitional promises, legal impunity for security forces, and the erosion of democratic checks have normalized the use of violence in political life, elevating the risk that future crises will be managed through force.

Regional Spillover and External Pressure

Since 2023, Sudan’s civil war has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, displacing nearly 12 million people. As a neighboring state with limited absorptive capacity, Chad has borne a disproportionate share of this shock. It currently hosts more than 844,000 Sudanese refugees, in addition to the roughly 409,000 refugees who had fled earlier waves of violence in Darfur. Thousands more continue to arrive. 

Figure 1: Regional Spillover from Sudan to Chad

[Source: The North Africa Post]

This influx placed severe strain on Chad’s already impoverished eastern regions. In Ouaddaï province, the population has increased by approximately 60% in just two years. According to the UNHCR, approximately 90% of new arrivals are women and children, and one in five young children is acutely malnourished. The humanitarian burden of displacement is highly gendered. Women and girls face heightened risks of exploitation, early marriage, and survival-based labor as households struggle to meet basic needs. Resource scarcity also increases exposure to gender-based violence, particularly in overcrowded settlements with limited protection mechanisms. Demand for housing, food, firewood, and water has surged, intensifying competition over scarce resources. Job competition has driven down wages, and everyone is struggling to find employment. Disputed cross-border trade has further driven up prices of basic goods such as sugar and soap, as supply routes once dependent on Sudan have been cut and replaced by longer, costlier alternatives.

Figure 2: Salafi-Jihadi Areas of Operation in the Lake Chad Basin

[Source: Liam Karr and Christopher Dayton. (Critical Threats 2025)]

Beyond displacement, Chad is embedded in a broader Sahelian security environment shaped by porous borders, armed groups, and shifting alliances. Extremist organizations, including Boko Haram, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), and Islamic State in the West African Province (ISWAP), operate across the region. Their presence does not affect all areas equally, nor does it always result in direct violence. In some contexts, it manifests instead through heightened militarization, surveillance, and preemptive security measures that reshape civilian life.

External armed actors have further complicated this landscape. The expansion of the Wagner Group in parts of the Sahel reflects changing international engagement and evolving security partnerships. While its presence does not automatically generate violence inside Chad, it does alter regional power dynamics and reshape incentives for local actors, contributing to a broader security environment that privileges force.

These dynamics have not produced a single, discrete crisis, but a layered and unstable external conflict. Large-scale displacement, regional militarization, and cross-border security interact with Chad’s domestic political repression and weak accountability structures. Their convergence erodes social cohesion, strains state capacity, and increases the likelihood that future crises will be managed through force—clarifying why early warning assessments consistently identify Chad as facing an extreme risk of mass civilian harm. 

Community-Level Violence and Social Cleavages

Farmer-herder violence in Chad is often framed as a competition over land and livelihoods, but it is increasingly shaped by politicized regional and identity-based grievances. Longstanding perceptions of northern dominance and unequal protection have sharpened community boundaries, escalating local disputes into symbols of broader political exclusion. As these narratives cement, grievances become less negotiable and more resistant to mediation. Violence in Chad is also unfolding at the community level, particularly through escalating farmer-herder conflicts in the country’s southern and central regions. These clashes have intensified in recent years, contributing to growing divisions between northern and southern communities and compounding longstanding grievances over political exclusion and unequal protection.

Many cattle owners originate from northern regions, while more sedentary farming communities in the south and center perceive pastoralists as beneficiaries of the protection offered by central authorities. These perceptions are reinforced by decades of political domination by northern elites and patterns in which administrative and military officials have personally owned cattle herds in the south. In disputes between herders and farmers, armed drivers have at times been employed to defend livestock, further blurring the boundary between economic activity and coercive authority. As a result, local conflicts over land and crops are widely understood as expressions of broader structural inequality.

Grievances have sharpened amid political tensions following contested elections and the erosion of democratic channels. In this context, more than 1,000 people have been killed and over 2,000 injured in recent intercommunal clashes. As state mediation mechanisms have weakened, there is a growing concern that affected communities may form self-defense militias, increasing the risk of retaliatory cycles and further entrenching localized violence.

Climate change has acted as a powerful accelerator of these dynamics. More frequent droughts and floods have reduced grazing land in northern regions, pushing pastoralists southward into the Sudanian zone, where most of Chad’s population resides. As herds move into agricultural areas, crops are damaged, livestock is killed in retaliation, and disputes escalate rapidly. State initiatives aimed at managing land use and reconciling agricultural and pastoral interests have been fragmented and widely perceived as biased, limiting their ability to prevent violence.

Local communities increasingly interpret farmer-herder violence as evidence of unequal protection and political favoritism. Farmers in southern and central regions frequently perceive pastoralists—particularly those linked to northern elites or security officials—as operating with impunity. As state mediation mechanisms have weakened, some community members have expressed concern that self-defense groups may be the only remaining means of protection. This reflects a well-documented early-warning pattern in which the absence of neutral protection and accountability lowers expectations of restraint and increases the likelihood that localized disputes will escalate into sustained cycles of retaliatory violence. 

Why This Equals Extreme Risk & Conclusion

Early warning assessments consistently identify Chad as facing an elevated risk of mass civilian harm. According to the Early Warning Project’s statistical assessment, the probability of a new episode of mass killing beginning in 2025 or 2026 is estimated at 8.1%. This figure does not imply imminence or inevitability. Rather, it highlights conditions that increase the likelihood of escalation.  

At a national level, repeated coercive transfers of power and the consolidation of military rule have narrowed political space and weakened accountability. Transitional promises were abandoned, elections lost their capacity to constrain authority, and security forces have operated without consequence for abuse. These dynamics do not guarantee mass violence, but they make use of force a more likely response to political challenge. 

Regional instability has compounded these risks. Displacement from Sudan has placed a sustained strain on already limited state capacity, particularly in Eastern regions. At the same time, cross-border insecurity and the broader militarization of the Sahel have reinforced a security-first approach that prioritizes control over civilian protection. These pressures do not affect all areas of Chad equally, but they increase stress on already weak institutions. 

At the community level, farmer-herder violence illustrates how national and regional pressures translate into everyday insecurity. Disputes over land and livelihoods are shaped by climate stress and demographic change, but also by long-standing perceptions of unequal protection and political exclusion. Where long-standing state mediation is weak or mistrusted, communities are more likely to view violence as a necessary form of self-defense, increasing the risk of retaliatory cycles. 

What emerges is vulnerability. Political repression, humanitarian strain, and localized conflict interact in ways that reduce the space for nonviolent resolution and make coercive responses more plausible during moments of stress. This is the kind of environment early warning systems are designed to flag. Chad’s elevated risk is not fixed. However, without meaningful efforts to protect civilians, restore accountability, and reopen channels for peaceful political and social contestation, the conditions that allow violence to escalate will remain in place. 

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Glossary

• Autocratic:  A system in which a ruler holds absolute power, like a dictatorship. 

• Amnesty Law(s): An amnesty law is a governmental act that grants a pardon or forgiveness for specific offenses. 

• Early Warning Project: A joint initiative of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College that employs mixed methods to spotlight countries where mass atrocities have not begun, but where the risk for such violence is high. 

• Gender-Based Violence: Any harmful act directed at someone based on gender or perceived gender, including sexual, physical, psychological, and economic violence. 

• Idriss Déby Itno: Chadian politician and military officer who ruled as the 6th president of Chad from 1991-2021. 

• Impunity: The absence or failure of accountability in practice, where individuals commit abuses without facing consequences, whether or not formal legal protections exist. 

• Intrastate: Activities or conflicts occurring entirely within a single nation or state, rather than between them. 

• Koro Toro Prison: A high-security facility known for its inhumane treatment of incarcerated persons. 

• Mahamat Idriss Déby: Also known by the nickname Kaka, Déby is a Chadian politician and military officer who has served as the seventh president of Chad from 2024-Present. He previously served in this role in a transitional capacity beginning in 2021. 

• Mass atrocities: Large-scale, systematic violence against civilian populations 

• Mass Killing: A mass killing occurs when the deliberate actions of armed groups against another specific group in a particular country result in the deaths of at least 1,000 noncombatant civilians in that country over a period of one year or less. Mass killing is a subset of “ mass atrocities.” 

• Open-source reporting: Research that uses any publicly available information in investigative stories.  

• Rebel Offensive: A coordinated, large-scale, and aggressive military campaign launched by non-state armed groups. 

• Spillover: The impact of conflict or instability in neighboring countries on domestic conditions, including displacement, economic strain, and heightened insecurity. Chad’s exposure to Sudan’s civil war is a key example. 

• State Capacity: The ability of the state to provide basic services, enforce the rule of law, and protect civilians. Limited state capacity can exacerbate grievances.

• Structural Risk Factors: Long-standing political, social, and economic conditions that increase vulnerability to mass violence. These factors do not directly cause atrocities, but shape the environment in which escalation becomes more likely. For more information, see Risk Factor Sources. 

• Transitional Military Council (TMC): A temporary military junta or governing body created to seize power following a coup d’état or the collapse of government, to manage a transition period before handing over power to a civilian government.