Urgent Action: Aid to Women and Children in Darfur

As the crisis in Darfur rages on, into its third year, more than two million people have been forced to flee their homes and are spread across a vast, unprotected area, where they continue to be attacked by government-allied janjaweed militias. UNICEF reports that nearly two million children have been directly harmed by the violence, some of them displaced multiple times. The war has now spilled over into neighboring Chad, where janjaweed militias massacred villagers in April, adding to a death toll that already surpasses 460,000. Since April, fighting between rival rebel groups has also affected civilians, escalating the death toll even further. In late May, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that the violence had reached unprecedented levels. The UN announced May that it might withdraw its aid workers from Darfur.

Rape is a primary weapon in this war. Women—who are struggling to keep their families alive in remote refugee camps that lack food, water, and healthcare—are routinely raped when they venture outside of the camp to fetch water, collect wood, or plant crops. Women who survive these attacks are often ostracized by their families for having been raped. Many have been banished from their homes for pregnancies resulting from rape.

With your help, MADRE is responding to the crisis with our partner Zenab, a Sudanese women's organization working in El Sieref and other refugee camps, where women have been systematically raped, children fear for their lives, and traumatized families lack even basic necessities.

The generous response from MADRE donors in the last two months has made it possible for Zenab to begin:

• Building enclosed toilets within the camp, allowing women to enjoy a modicum of privacy and security and reducing the need to leave the camps, which will help to improve security for displaced women and girls.

• Providing three trained social workers to offer play therapy to traumatized children, as well as conduct training sessions for local women and men about the harmful consequences of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)—which Zenab reports is practiced on almost every young girl.

• Feeding fifty families—approximately 400 people. Food resources are an incredibly important part of aid efforts, especially as UN and other aid agencies in the region are scrambling to find enough funds to pay for rations needed by more than two million displaced people.

The onset of the rainy season this month will make large-scale aid deliveries even more difficult, as roads become impassable. Yet MADRE’s partnership with a locally-based women’s organization will make it possible for us to distribute emergency aid directly to women who are most in need.

None of Zenab’s work—feeding families, promoting safety and security, and empowering women—would be possible without the support of people like you.

• June 2006 Darfur Project Update (DOC)