Darfur refugees in Chad plead with senior UN official for water, food, education

Water, food, education for children and lack of firewood topped a litany of concerns that the senior United Nations refugee official heard on a visit to camps in Chad, where 200,000 people have sought refuge from the two-year conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region.

On the final stop of a five-day mission to the region, Acting UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Wendy Chamberlin assured all she met that the agency and its partners were doing everything they can to improve the situation while they await the day that they can safely go home to Darfur.

Yesterday, she visited UNHCR’s field office in the town of Iriba and met with refugees in the Touloum camp.

In Darfur on Wednesday, Ms. Chamberlin called on the international community to contribute more money for humanitarian relief for the crisis, which began two years ago when rebels took up arms, partly in protest at the distribution of economic resources, but has since been compounded by armed militia attacks on villages which have uprooted more than 1.8 million people internally beyond the 200,000 who fled into Chad.