Genocide in Darfur --- talking points

A race against time

by Independent UK staff, 2004.08.09

No one will admit the Janjaweed are here. Yet everyone lives in fear of the men in white. Darfur is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.


  • 1.2 million: the number of refugees forced out of their homes in Darfur, western Sudan in the past 18 months
  • 36,000: the best estimate of the dead - the figure may be 100,000
  • 377: villages found destroyed or damaged in a recent US satellite survey of 578 settlements
  • 200,000: refugees likely to be in poverty-stricken neighbouring Chad by the end of the year
  • 350,000-plus: people who could die in the next few months from disease and malnutrition
  • 1 for every 285 people: provision of latrines in Kalma camp in July, against the aid agencies’ target of 1 in 20. That was before mass increase in the number of refugees there
  • 30 days: time the UN gave the Khartoum government to rein in the Janjaweed, or face sanctions
  • 2 million: lives at risk, says chief of UN humanitarian operations, Jan Egeland
  • A day, a week, a month: all that may be left as the hunger crisis intensifies and the coming rainy season makes the health problems of mass refugee camps worse than ever.

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