Program Details: Darfur

Despite unimaginable violence and grief, Darfur's women are brave, determined and resourceful. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Amid ongoing attempts to instill a lasting peace in Darfur, Mercy Corps continues to help more than 170,000 Sudanese displaced by the deadly, ongoing conflict. More than 200 of our staff are addressing the immediate needs of families — improving sanitation, providing clean water, distributing relief items, and creating safe places for children to learn and play. We're also helping women gain knowledge and skills they can use when they return home.

A Prolonged Crisis
Since rebels took up arms against the government in 2003, at least 200,000 people have died through violence, hunger and disease in Darfur, a remote, barren land about the size of France. More than 2.5 million have been forced to flee their homes.

Things haven't improved much . Displacement in Darfur continues to increase. In the last 12 months, another 300,000 people have fled their villages. Because of continued insecurity, aid groups don't have consistent access to half of the population in need of humanitarian assistance. And attacks on aid workers have increased. Six were killed in October 2007.

Even in a best-case scenario of political reconciliation and disarmament, millions of people in Darfur will remain extremely vulnerable and dependent on outside assistance for the coming years.

Building Healthy Environments
Mercy Corps has built or rehabilitated more than 4,000 latrines, trained dozens of men in latrine construction, and established a garbage-collection system where ten donkey carts collect waste from the camps each day. To increase access to safe water, our aid teams maintain hand-pumps and hand dug wells, test water quality and provide chlorination services at water points.

Promoting Good Hygiene
Nearly 200 Mercy Corps hygiene promoters — men and women selected and trained from within the community — go house-to-house in every camp distributing items such as soap and insecticide treated mosquito nets, and promoting good health practices. These safety measures help prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as cholera, Hepatitis E and malaria, which have claimed thousands of lives in Darfur.

Protecting Vulnerable Women
More than 4,000 women are trained to build fuel-efficient stoves, which require about half the wood of normal stoves. That means fewer hours collecting firewood, less time in dangerous wooded areas outside of camp and an income from selling the wood they gather but don't need for cooking. Various classes also offer women a chance to increase their literacy and learn skills such as baking, weaving or cheese making.

Educating Youth
In 16,000-person Mukjar, where nine out of ten residents are displaced from other villages, we've constructed, rehabilitated or furnished schools for all the town's 5,000 youth. In every camp where we operate, Mercy Corps and the Ministry of Education identify teachers, consult community leaders to develop school sites, and facilitate the instruction of Sudan's national curriculum to children aged 7-16.

Tailoring an Effective Response
Our efforts to help families persevere through the crisis continue to evolve and expand. Mercy Corps is working with community leaders to develop assistance projects that will help families raise poultry and crops, fund veterinary programs to protect their livestock, and establish community food stores.

Future programs also will incorporate host communities, nomadic settlements and intact villages to lessen the potential for resource conflicts, facilitate the peaceful return of people to their communities, and build a stronger Darfur.