Who Are the Victims?  |  What Amnesty is Doing  |  What People Are Saying  |  Eyes on Darfur Project


Who Are the Victims?

In the remote, parched landscape of Darfur, Sudan, the rhythms of everyday life are a distant memory. Now there are days and nights filled with the dread of “evil horsemen” called Janjawid. They charge into villages on horseback, camelback and trucks, armed with automatic weapons and murderous intent. As one survivor told Amnesty International, “They came in the houses and ran after those who were trying to flee. A man was shot four times in the back and in the leg. They then burned the village. Only 10 out of 100 houses remained intact.”

The Crisis At-a-Glance

- People who have died as a direct result of the conflict: between 2 and 400,000
- People displaced from Darfur: 2.5 million
- People displaced from Darfur into Chad: 240,000
- Displaced Chadians: some 100,000, with some tens of thousands fleeing into Darfur
- People displaced from the Central African Republic: thousands
- TOTAL at risk: some 4.5 million or 2/3 of the total population of Darfur

“When we see Janjawid, we run,” one 35-year-old woman from Habila, Darfur, told Amnesty International. “Some of us succeed in getting away, and some are caught and taken to be gang-raped.”

This is Darfur’s nightmare. The inconceivable suffering. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. The rape of thousands of women. The loss of homes for millions of men, women and children. The metrics of pain are staggering.

The catastrophe began for the people of Darfur in 2003, when the Sudanese government enlisted Janjawid militias to carry out the dirty work in its scorched-earth campaign to crush rebel activity in Darfur. The conflict is fundamentally about resources, especially the increasingly scarce land that farmers and nomads must share. The conflict spilled over into neighboring Chad in 2006. And so the nightmare multiplies.

Amnesty International has listened to the voices of Darfur’s besieged civilians and mobilized supporters worldwide to take action on their behalf. Amnesty International has organized letter-writing campaigns and demonstrations to draw attention to the crisis. Amnesty representatives have met with UN, U.S. and European officials to call for their vigorous action and pressed the governments of Chad and Sudan directly. The international community must, at long last, put a stop to these atrocities and bring relief to those who have survived but continue to suffer.

The crisis in Darfur and eastern Chad can seem overwhelming, too intractable to stop, but while we may not know the individuals who suffer, we understand the love of a mother for her child, the drive to protect one’s family, the importance of home. When we accept that amid the horror are millions of individuals struggling every day to survive, we have no choice but to act. Join the growing movement of citizens worldwide who are taking action for Darfur.