Darfur's 2 million refugees languish in camps over security issues

Published: 2005-06-28

NYALA, Sudan (CNS) -- While the Sudanese government encourages some refugees in the Darfur region to return home, aid workers here report that conditions for a safe return do not exist in most areas. "A few of the displaced have gone home and seen that they have nothing, so they have returned to the camps," said Bjorg Mide, director of ACT/Caritas Darfur Emergency Response, a global alliance of Catholic and Protestant aid agencies. The United Nations says at least 180,000 have been killed in the conflict in Darfur. Some 2 million residents of Darfur have been chased from their homes in a scorched-earth campaign that many have characterized as genocide. International officials in Sudan report that, in an effort to get people out of the overcrowded camps, the government is paying families and providing transportation so that they may return to their villages. Yet many of the villages are nothing but ashes following two years of attacks by Arab militias aligned with government troops.

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