Darfur: a prison with no walls

Two million people are refugees in Darfur, fleeing the fighting that has tainted their country for years. With numbers increasing and a shortage of food, reports Cafod's director, aid agencies are struggling. There will be no solution and no ceasefire unless all the parties come to the table

When I first flew over the southern Darfur town of Nyala in a United Nations plane more than two years ago, its outskirts were a patchwork of tens of thousands of blue polka dots. Some highly ordered like a blue orchard, others scattered in a chaotic dance around the dusty town. The ubiquitous blue plastic sheeting, which is used to top an igloo-like shelter, was part of a package of basic household items given to the people displaced by Darfur's conflict.

The displaced people, refugees within their own country, were looking for security first; the need for shelter, food and water came later. For the first months of their existence, the camps were merely huddles of frightened people sharing whatever food they could find and finding relative security in numbers. Once the numbers grew, the international aid community began to arrive, providing what support it could.

Two and a half years after my first visit, Nyala is surrounded by 300,000 people, approximately three times its own population. The old plastic is faded and tattered, perished by the burning sun; the shelters are now temporary homes covered in grass and strengthened by branches or even mud bricks in a tiny compound protected by a thorn hedge. Throughout Darfur perhaps two million, out of a total population of seven million, are living in similar conditions. Another two million are struggling to cope with the impact of this conflict on their disrupted livelihoods.

One of the camps I revisited was Derieg, home to 32,000 people. It now has two primary schools run by our partners, which teach 3,000 children, but they would love to school the 7,000 other children. Around 100 people queue up at the clinic each day but the doctors have time to see only 60 of them and the rest have to return the next morning.

The clinic, the two water points, the pit latrines and the food aid have meant that people remain alive, preventing the outbreak of major diseases like cholera. But such success hides a grim reality of life. The people in the camps have been away from their homes and land for years. As one man told me, they are in a prison with no walls. The women cannot go far to collect wood nor children to graze animals for fear of being attacked and raped. The men fear even worse violence if they attempt to leave the camps.

Many of the four million affected people are being supported by Cafod, together with all Disaster Emergency Committee agencies, and in turn the generosity of the British public. The ecumenical programme supported by Cafod and Christian Aid alone supports 325,000 people. The trauma of the violence remains deep. Many witnessed killings and some lost loved ones. Counselling survivors is now part of the role of humanitarian agencies, linked closely with literacy and new skills, which help them to support each other and focus their minds away from their tragedy.

Some have tried to go home. One leader, Sheik Ibrahim Hussein, took some of his tribe back to restart the community. They were chased away again and their livestock taken. Stories of failed returns exacerbate an increasingly prevalent sense of dependency within the camps. People see little hope in the peace process that could end the violence.

Growing, too, is an alienation and radicalisation of the youth; rejecting traditional leadership and secretly supporting rebel groups. To date, many of the tribes, Arab and African, have remained neutral but the fear of many here is that this may change and escalate the crisis. Most of the recent fighting is between ever fragmenting rebel factions.

A big issue now, even more than the imminent arrival of the heavy rains with the dislocation to transport and suffering to tent-dwellers this causes, is the growing number of newly displaced people. In Derieg they have already seen 5,000 new arrivals in the past six months. Sheik Ibrahim told me that, for the first time in two years, there is a food shortage. The same amount of food - based on meagre rations anyway - has to be shared out among more mouths. The UN in Darfur told me that in the past six months more than 300,000 additional people have been displaced, mostly by infighting among rebels. A UN report last month put the total number of internally displaced people within Darfur at 2.1 million. The World Food Programme cannot cope and people will go hungry.

But the biggest question for everyone is: will we ever see peace? Another leader, Sheik Ahmed, was passionate: "Without peace, what hope do our children have; they don't go to school, they won't have land or a job, they live in a prison - what is their life?"

Global leaders talk about the make-up of peacekeeping forces and whether they should be from the African Union or the UN or both. But in an area the size of France you cannot keep peace without first making it, and that involves bringing together representatives of all the people and ensuring that they all have something to gain by the agreement.

The Darfur peace process has been going on for years but there was widespread despair following the latest deal signed in Abuja last year between the Government of Sudan and one of the rebel factions led by Minni Minawi. Not included was the largest rebel group, or any other rebel group, nor the Arab militias, nor representatives from the local people, nor women, nor civil society. It was bound to fail. There are now splinter groups from rebel groups and militias. For many of us it is clear that the only long-term solution to the Darfur crisis is for all parties to come together and agree a peace deal. Until this happens there can be no effective ceasefire.

The international community has a vital role in peacemaking, which is to bring back to the negotiating table all parties and peoples and civil society representatives. This approach has been successful in south Sudan but even there it is being undermined by failure to find meaningful peace in Darfur. I can't pretend I came away from Darfur with messages of hope from those I met, more one of increasing desperation. In these circumstances it's galling when many on the sidelines think we may be prolonging the conflict because we are focused on the task of keeping people alive and not on pointing the finger.

Read Julie Flint's article