When the UN General Assembly convened this Fall, it focused on the crises in Darfur and neighboring Chad. While distinct, these two conflicts fuel one another and could still merge and spread further. Each requires the attention of the international community—not just of states, but of you and me.
I have just returned from Eastern Chad, where the UN has established camps for Darfuri refugees and the internally displaced persons (IDPs) of Chad. The region is burdened not only by poverty, but by outbreaks of malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever—and both political and criminal violence. More than 240,000 refugees from Darfur have re-settled in Chad this year. A further 180,000 have been internally displaced by the spreading chaos.
Both the refugees of Darfur and the internally displaced of Chad seek security and dignity, but are guaranteed neither. Male chiefs dispense food and water, hoarding both, providing for themselves and their livestock first. The remains go to women and children.
Women build the huts, weave the mats, and risk their personal safety to carry out daily chores. While searching for firewood, many are raped. Their unknown assailants may be members of the undisciplined Chadian army, Darfuri militias, or simply bandits. No one knows, or bothers to distinguish, referring to all as junjaweed. The fear and the indignity are the same.
Nonetheless, I return with a sense of hope. That hope has two sources. First, governments have at long last begun to rally. Second, the victims in the camps have neither given up nor given in. Despite losing family members and their homes, they need not lose their voice. They are essential to any effort to forge a sustainable peace built on reconciliation. They have voices that can be heard, if we provide the forum.
Because each member of my delegation of eight women had held policy positions, we did what we knew best. We turned to current policymakers and briefed them the way we had been briefed. We identified the tools at their disposal, and urged their use. In follow-on meetings with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, French Foreign Minister Kouscher, Swedish Foreign Minister Bildt, German Defense Minister Jung and British Prime Minister Brown, we shared our conclusions, and our recommendations:
First, absent international action, a regional crisis will occur. The crises in Sudan and Chad are interlinked, and could spread to the Central African Republic. Warring ethnic groups span the borders, and rebel militias supported by each country’s president wreak havoc in the other’s fragile and lawless state.
