Ecumenical aid effort helps sexual violence victims in Darfur

Published: 2005-06-22

ZALINGEI, Sudan (CNS) -- Kaltouma Harroon Musa cooks her family's meals over a wood stove in her hut of dried mud and thatch on the edges of this desert outpost, but obtaining the firewood for that stove can be dangerous. A relief operation that brings together church agencies from around the world has helped her build a new stove that consumes much less fuel, and as a result may have saved Musa from horrible violence. Musa lives in the Hassahissa refugee camp where she is one of 2 million black Africans in the Darfur region of Sudan who fled from attacks that have killed as many as 180,000 people, according to U.N. estimates, and left hundreds of villages in ashes. Some of the attackers -- members of Arab militias that allied themselves with the government's campaign against the two regional rebel groups -- lurk around the camps. "The women in these camps come from villages that were attacked, and they watched their husbands and fathers and sons be slaughtered. When the attackers were done with the men, they raped the women, even the old ones. Then the women ran away and came here to the camps, but if they leave the camp to get firewood they're captured and raped by force again," said Alawia Ahmed, a community-care advocate with the ACT/Caritas Darfur Emergency Response, a joint effort of Action by Churches Together, a global alliance of Protestant aid organizations, and Caritas, the international network of Catholic relief and development agencies.

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .