Editor's note: Al Fateh "Oumda" Haroun is the iACT Program Coordinator in eastern Chad and also serves as a board member. He oversees iACT’s sports and education programs across 12 refugee camps, providing leadership and mentorship to 200+ refugee team members.
I remember well when I escaped my homeland, Darfur in western Sudan, and made my way with many other genocide “survivors” to one of several camps in neighboring Chad. We welcomed what we believed would be a temporary, safe, refuge, hopefully only a few days or months away from the unspeakable violence we left behind. In Darfur, hundreds of thousands of innocent souls were slaughtered. In my family, 45 people perished. We believed that the rest of the world would realize what was happening to our homes and people, and justice and peace would soon be restored.
It has now been almost 7,665 days, that’s 252 months or 21 years since life began for me and the almost 370,000 Darfuri refugees in the camps in eastern Chad. For years we hoped that at least our children would return to a life of peace, play, education, and opportunity. Go home to a place where they would not have to continue carrying the burden of loss and trauma.
Today, not only are we still in the camps, but because of the new civil war in Sudan there are now more than 1.2 million of us crammed together, and conditions are becoming catastrophic.
To better understand life for us today, I would ask the international community to picture women left sitting in the rain with no food or clean water, no medical attention, no shelter, sleeping on the ground covered only by the sky.
To better understand life for us today, I would ask the international community to picture women left sitting in the rain with no food or clean water, no medical attention, no shelter, sleeping on the ground covered only by the sky. Children, mothers, and fathers are dying, and elders at the highest rate. People believed coming to the camps was a better choice than staying in Darfur and dying in a government aerial bombing attack or a militia massacre.
Many of us still wish we’ll one day be able to return to our homeland. We wish for an end to the current war. We wish for free and honest elections and a new government to be formed that includes all Sudanese, not one divided by culture or religion. We wish for courts to implement justice and to hold people accountable for breaking laws, especially crimes against humanity. Justice is essential to ultimately alleviate the suffering and existence forced on us.
War is happening around the world, but it has ethics and it has laws for accountability. The innocent civilians of Sudan are suffering, the kind of suffering that cannot truly be described. For there are kinds of crimes that are unimaginable: people buried alive, selling women in the daylight as if they are goods to sell and buy, raping teenagers in front of their fathers, and their fathers are forced to be eye witnesses, not only that but as well women have been raped in front of their husbands while they are witnesses under the threat of guns. I can't mention all of the crimes. What I have mentioned is only a drop in the sea. The activities of the Rapid Support Forces have to be stopped. Otherwise, other countries will suffer, and the world will not be safe from the tragedies of these militias.
I will keep working for justice and peace. But, I need help, because I ‘m not sure we “survivors” in the camps can make it for another 20 years. I am calling the international community to stand up and stop these human-made atrocities. I am encouraging governments to apply the law equally to everybody. I know it's difficult, but at least to reduce these kinds of crimes, and I have a dream this world will change to the better.
