A camp for internally displaced persons near Zalingei, in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Photo: Paul Jeffrey/ACT-CWS Photo: Gillian Sanford/ACT-Caritas

Darfur -- The Crisis Deepens

Story by Chris Herlinger/CWS

By nearly all accounts, the situation in the Darfur region of western Sudan is getting worse, not better.

"The situation is deteriorating -- mainly because security for humanitarian workers as well as for displaced people is worsening," says Fidele Lumeya of the Church World Service Emergency Response Program. The three-year crisis in the contested area of western Sudan has resulted in more than 300,000 deaths, with more than two million people driven from their homes to live in displacement camps.

Since July 2004, Church World Service has supported the work of its long-time partners Sudan Council of Churches, Sudan Social-Development Organization (SUDO), and Norwegian Church Aid, in cooperation with Action by Churches Together International and Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of Catholic relief, development, and social service organizations.

The CWS-supported program has become one of the largest humanitarian efforts in southern and western Darfur and has proven its capacity again and again to respond to this humanitarian crisis.

In the past year, with your help, the program delivered essential services to 325,000 people; in the three years since the program began, it has built 22 health clinics, distributed non-food items to more than 65,000 families, and offered psychosocial and protection programs to women and girls who have suffered sexual and gender-based violence. The CWS commitment continues into 2007 and beyond.

Among those assisted by these programs are families living in the shadow of the Jebel Marra mountain, perhaps the most strategic location in all of Darfur and a highly militarized zone.

One woman at a SUDO center said, "Only the NGOs (the relief and humanitarian groups) here make us feel safe. We trust the NGOs; they provide all the services, food, water, health care, household items. They have given us everything."

Hawa, another woman at the SUDO center concurred. "Without the NGOs, without SUDO's center here, we would do nothing," she said. "We would just suffer."

Your prayers and gifts are needed as we continue to assist the people of Darfur, western Sudan.