Eman Musa Eltighani is a young Sudanese women who has been working with UNICEF in Darfur since 2004. In this Frontline Diary entry she documents her thoughts on recent developments – and fears for the future.
In a few days, I will have completed two years of work in Darfur, travelling between camps for internally displaced people in rebel-controlled parts of the region and in urban areas. Every day, I used to sense a slight improvement in the general situation compared to how it felt in August 2004 when I first came to the field, but now I worry we are heading back to where we were two years ago.
Indelible images of suffering are now deeply rooted in my mind: Endless queues of women wait for food rations under a sizzling sun. They carry crying children on their backs. Other kids wander around them, closely watched so they don’t disappear. A child dying of malnutrition sits on his mother’s lap. Children scream, watching strangers come and go in the camps. All they dream of at night are the horsemen who destroyed their villages.
Meanwhile, the same camps have become the focus of numerous efforts by humanitarian workers, United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations to help provide as much of a normal a life as possible for those who’ve fled their homes.
My concern is that those efforts will vanish with the wind if no serious action is taken to stop the deterioration of the security situation."
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