Villages in Darfur, Sudan
 
 
Since 2003 the region of Darfur, Sudan, has been the scene of a bitter war between different ethnic groups. Darfur has been regarded by many experts in international affairs as the first conflict triggered by climate change. Over the last 40 years rainfall has decreased by 30%, and the Sahara desert is advancing at a rate of 1.5 km a year. Clashes over water resources and the best tracts of land have pitted the Janjaweed “demons on horseback”, a group of militiamen recruited from local Baggara nomadic tribes, against the region’s non-Baggara population, chiefly made up of tribes who live by farming. The Sudanese government has been accused by the international community of arming and militarily supporting the Janjaweed, in return for control of the oil-rich region.

Estimates of the numbers of victims range, depending on the source, from 50,000 (World Health Organisation, September 2004) to 450,000 (according to Eric Reeves, 28 April 2006). Most NGOs regard the figure of 400,000 dead, provided by the Coalition for International Justice (a Washington-based non-profit organisation) as credible. This figure is also cited by the United Nations.

On 31 August 2006 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1706, which approved sending a 20,000-strong UN peacekeeping force, to act alongside the 7,000 men of the African Union in the region but the Sudan Governament opposed the resolution. Despite the UN’s intervention, the situation remains desperate: fighting has not stopped, and the refugee camps holding the hundreds of thousands who have fled the conflict are sinking into conditions of the utmost misery.


 
Download image: This GeoEye-1 image shows a village in Darfur, Sudan.
The villages of this region are involved in the clashes between ethnic groups that have been raging there.

 

 
Download image: GeoEye-1 image of a village in Darfur, Sudan. International organisations
such as the United Nations use high-resolution satellite images to monitor crises and humanitarian emergencies



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