Sudanese women in camps tell U.S. bishop: 'We need food'

Published: 2004-08-06

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- While meeting with a group of Sudanese mothers in a refugee camp in western Sudan, Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., was told, "We need food." Bishop Ricard, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on International Policy, met with the women at a camp in the Darfur region of Sudan, where Arab militias have driven some 1.2 million people from their homes in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against black Africans. Bishop Ricard told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview from Khartoum, Sudan's capital, that he first met with male residents of the camp out of respect for African culture, but the women of the camp demanded a chance to speak with him, too. "They said they were running out of food. It was very difficult for me to hear this, but these women, these mothers were saying 'We don't have food,'" the bishop said. The bishop traveled to Sudan Aug. 1-5 with Ken Hackett, president of Catholic Relief Services, and Franciscan Father Michael Perry, policy adviser to the U.S. bishops on African affairs. Bishop Ricard said Darfur is facing a humanitarian crisis as "massive as any I've ever seen." "The consequences in terms of loss of life and disruption of livelihood are as serious as any I have ever seen before," he said. "It's a very hard situation to experience, very tragic." He said aid agencies have started to mobilize and bring aid to the region, but the response has been hampered by a number of factors. Darfur, a remote region already, has been further cut off from aid by heavy rains. "We're dealing with a country that has very few functioning roads; paths used for roads have become nonexistent once the rains come," the bishop said. The heavy rains have also added to the misery of life in the refugee camps, which he described as a "series of sheds set up on treeless plains under a blazing sun." "There's nothing that resembles hell more strikingly than refugee camps when it rains. Rains come through the tents and makeshift shelters; mothers, children and babies and old people essentially have to sleep in the mud," Bishop Ricard said.

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