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NAR 1 (: 15): Doctors and humanitarian aid workers providing services to refugee children from Darfur also supply drawing materials in an effort to help ease their trauma. Doctor Annie Sparrow is a pediatrician who has worked in the camps and spoke with the children who created the images- some graphically depicting the violence and atrocities that they experienced. In New York she gave a talk and displayed a picture drawn by a 13 year old boy.
TAPE (A. Sparrow) (:10 ): It is not a picture as it initially looks like of men and women dancing but of the soldiers taking away the women to be raped… (fade under)
NAR 2(: 18): The picture shows the women being led away by soldiers amidst helicopters, bombs and burning huts. Children draw themselves as stick figures running with outstretched arms, their mouths wide open, screaming. Zeinab Eyega was also at the talk. A Sudanese who runs the Center for African Women here in New York, she says that the problem is not only the trauma suffered by the women and children who experience the violence, it is also the babies who are born to rape victims.
TAPE: (Z. Eyega): (:9): You will have the offspring of the perpetrators of that level of violence, but yet they are your own children so what do you do?
NAR 3: (: 14) There is little protection available even with the 7,000 African Union troops in the area. Jemera Rone of Human Rights Watch says that the peacekeepers have not been able to carry out their limited mandate because of government interference.
TAPE (J Rone): (: 16 ): They put up a million obstacles to their being able to do their job- they have denied them jet fuel for their airplanes. They have had curfews that limit the AU's ability to patrol at night and protect civilians.
NAR 4 (: 18): The African Union's inability to curb the government raids on civilians in Darfur is now being felt across the border in Chad. In February attacks on Chadian villages near the Darfur border prompted the departure of 150 UN and Humanitarian Aid workers. Michale Neuman of Doctor's Without Borders just returned from a visit to Western Darfur where he says Chadian refugees have been arriving for the past few weeks.
TAPE (M. Neuman) (:12): Over the last two years this is, I think, the first time that we have seen a significant number of people - around 10,000 now- north of El Geneina- [cut name of town?] Seeking refuge in Darfur, fleeing attacks.
NAR 5: (:10) The resources the refugees need are hard to find in an area wracked with it's own problems. Dorn Townsend works for UNICEF in Sudan and says the situation is dire.
TAPE: (D. Townsend) (:8): In Darfur the government- it's not a stand still they have pretty much won. The countryside is cleared out- most of the villages look like ashtrays.
NAR 6: (:15) Now the strength of the government campaign is spilling over the border with Chad. Townsend explains that the conflict along the Chad- Darfur border is a complicated mix of both countries fighting rebel factions.
TAPE: (D. Townsend) (:16): They're both kind of chasing their own kind of domestic demons. You've got the Chadian army that's defending it's borders and also trying to chase rebels trying to unseat their own government in Chad. And you've got the Darfurian army trying to chase rebels that are trying to destabilize their region.
NAR 7: ( :7) The Chadian rebels are posing a real threat that can have consequences for the stability of the border area and their government's relationship with Sudan. Aid organizations estimate that there are tens of thousands of displaced Chadian civilians that they cannot reach. Human Rights Watch recently released a report detailing the declining stability of the situation in Chad. Jemera Rone from Human Rights Watch.
TAPE (J Rone): (: 16 ): The Chadian situation is early- I mean we have seen what has happened in Darfur already. We don't need to wait for there to be a million displaced people in Chad.
NAR 8: (:21) In both Chad and Darfur the situation remains grim with an increasing number of displaced civilians and the scaling back of UN and Humanitarian aid workers. Back in New York at the close of her talk, Dr. Sparrow displayed a set of drawings that pointed to a pattern found in many of the images the children drew. One showed a child next to a giant walkie talkie- another a woman clutching a phone. Dr. Sparrow spoke with the little girl about her picture.
TAPE (A. Sparrow) (:8): And this little child who drew her said there was no one to protect her and she needed to call the agencies for help.
NAR 9: Without a strong international peacekeeping force, equipped to fulfill a mandate to protect innocent civilians, aid agencies will continue to be unable to reach the most vulnerable populations in both Sudan and Chad.
I'm Gabrielle Galanek Columbia Radio News