IDPs going hungry in Darfur as bandits target aid workers

Others seek the food rations offered in the camps to soften the blow of rising global food prices, while some just want to tap into the free healthcare and other social services in the camp.

Amira Yagoub, a mother of three, is not one of the freeloaders at Al Salaam. She fled to the camp following the murder of her husband more than two years ago.

A gang of armed men on horseback raided her village in Barkatolle, 50 km south of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, and killed 12 men who put up resistance.

“Life is tough here,” she said, comparing it with the idyllic life she once enjoyed in Barkatolle.

“I have no farm to cultivate, no livestock to tend, no space, no bed, no freedom, no social life. Every day is a gruelling struggle,” she said. “We’ve been forced to depend on aid agencies for survival.”

Once a proud small-scale farmer with a relatively decent home and a promising future,she now inhabitss a weather-beaten stick-and-plastic structure. The monthly food rations she receives in the camp last only two weeks.

To supplement relief aid, Yagoub has joined a group of women selling flatbread in the camp to eke out a living. The group of five earns $30 a week. “It is small money, but better than nothing,” she reasoned.

Despite the camp’s threadbare conditions, Yagoub points to the sunnier side of things. She scrawled her name on the ground to showcase her newly acquired literacy, thanks to a women’s empowerment centre at the camp.

Then she looked up, a smile on her face, and she declared, “One day this camp will be empty. We’ll all return home.”