Switzerland's Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has suspended funding of CHF 1.25 million ($1.52 million) to Doctors Without Borders (MSF) following reports that the humanitarian NGO failed to adequately inform the Swiss authorities of the scale of reports of sexual misconduct by staff in Chad.
The SDC is Switzerland's international cooperation agency within the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). The suspended funds represent 20% of the total money pledged by the Swiss government to MSF for the current year.
The SDC first received wind of potential sexual misconduct by MSF in Chad in November 2024. However, the matter only entered the public eye after the Associated Press published an MSF internal investigation report in June 2026 that the matter entered the public eye.
The MSF internal report (as revealed by AP) found a pattern of abuse and sexual exploitation by some local and foreign staff working in Chad along the Sudanese border, in some cases targeting underage girls or trading food or jobs for sex with refugees.
Curfew placed on some girls in camps
According to Swiss media and the AP, in at least one camp, community leaders imposed a curfew on girls to keep them away from aid workers, not from armed groups.
MSF found 59 allegations of abuse and said 18 staff members were dismissed and barred from future employment. The report also said some of the repeated exploitation suggested potentially organized “sexual trafficking.”
Following this, the SDC demanded the full MSF internal files.
Now, over the last weekend, NZZ am Sonntag obtained internal e-mails from federal and SDC employees and meeting minutes which reveal that the federal development workers were "poorly informed" of MSF's activities despite continuing to fund them.
Among one of the things that SDC employees were unaware of (until June 2026) was that 6 of the 18 dismissed employees were employed by the Swiss section of Doctors Without Borders.
The issue involves taxpayer money. MSF itself said that the Swiss federal government supported the organization's projects in Africa, including Chad and South Sudan, in 2024 and 2025 with a total of around seven million Swiss francs. In total, MSF received almost CHF 12 million from the SDC in 2025.
The federal government is now, according to Swiss media, withholding the last portion of the core contribution for 2026, meaning CHF 1.25 million will remain blocked for the time being.
A spokesperson for the Swiss foreign ministry confirmed this to Keystone-SDA after the NZZ am Sonntag article was published.
The spokesperson added that the charity had stayed in contact with Bern, but conceded that the full scale of confirmed cases and dismissals was not disclosed "proactively and early enough".
The Jerusalem Post reached out to SDC for comment.