Sudan joined Chad on Tuesday (January 10) in offering to open talks to defuse mounting tension along their joint border, but the two sides still appeared far apart. At the weekend, Chad said it was ready to talk to Sudan but only if Khartoum agreed to a set of conditions, including the disarmament of Chadian rebels N’djamena claims are operating on the Sudanese side of the border.

Chad's President Idriss Deby urged the United Nations on Wednesday to take control of Sudan's volatile Darfur region because he said Khartoum was using the conflict there to destabilise neighbouring states. Deby, who faces threats from rebel attacks on Chad's eastern frontier with Sudan and from army desertions at home, made the call during a meeting of central African leaders which he convened in N'Djamena to discuss tensions with Khartoum.

Chad has reacted angrily to warnings from the World Bank, after its parliament voted to relax controls on the use of its oil revenues. The government has accused the World Bank of acting like a coloniser. The body lent Chad more than $39m (£23m) to build a pipeline with an estimated total cost of almost $4bn. It was on condition that Chad's churches, trade unions and non-governmental organisations monitored how oil revenues were spent.

The World Bank has “serious concerns” about the Chad government’s plan to do away with a special fund that safeguards petrodollars for future generations, the institution said. The trust fund was among innovative socio-economic measures required by the World Bank in return for financing part of a vast pipeline from Chad to the Atlantic Ocean off Cameroon. But the Chad government says it needs to tap into the petrodollars now to tackle a financial crisis and bolster security in the country.

The purpose of this position is to support effective implementation of the technical aspects of Oxfam's public health response in eastern Chad; to promote gender equity throughout the programme cycle and provide gender analysis to support the implementation of Oxfam's programme.