People fleeing violence continue to pour into the camps of Darfur. This woman arrived in the Abu Shouk camp near the North Darfur town of El Fasher only weeks ago when her home village grew increasingly insecure.

The displaced, confined to the vast camps in Darfur, say that one of the most important things for them is to learn to read and write. The IRC’s literacy classes, offering tutoring in both Arabic and English, are always well attended by people of all ages.

At special women’s centers in the camps, women learn to read and write and come together to sing, dance, draw or relax over a cup of coffee. “The coffee sessions help women connect with each other and talk about the past and hopefully over time also heal their war trauma,” says IRC’s Sabinty Conteh, who oversees the centers in the camps around El Fasher.

IRC’s protection officer Simon Ridley runs a program in El Fasher which puts the Sudanese police force, alongside the camp population and local leaders, in the school bench to learn about human rights. The program also trains volunteers who distribute basic legal information, human rights messages, offer mediation in local conflicts and refers cases to legal aid lawyers if required. “In the past, if I came across victims, I didn’t know what to do,” said one volunteer in South Darfur. “Now I can help them. Solving these problems helps people feel less angry about larger issues. There used to be no justice. Now there is some. We are doing valuable things.”

The IRC clinic in the sprawling, ramshackle camp of Kalma, near the South Darfur town of Nyala is one of the biggest medical facilities for displaced people in the world. Thomas Badia, who runs the clinic, says that his teams treat 400 patients a day, many of them recent arrivals. “They mainly suffer from acute respiratory infections, diarrhea and eye and skin infections,” he says. “We also have 108 reported cases of cholera in the camp right now. The newly-arrived walk long distances without water, so we see a lot of dehydration and malnourished children.”

A girl collects water at one of the taps IRC’s teams have installed across the camps to provide its population with fresh water. Rania Hassaballa Ali, the IRC’s environmental health manager, says that these water points are essential. “People are living so close to one another and the minute they are unable to access clean water, there will be a major outbreak of disease,” she says.

IRC doctor Hafiz Abbas is on his morning round among the many patients in a camp outside El Fasher. “The role of our health promoters, who walk door-to-door to provide hygiene guidance for camp residents, is crucial to stop diseases in the camps,” he says.

Collecting firewood is a necessity for cooking and heating in the camps. This task, typically assigned to women and children, forces them to search for wood outside the camp, with great risks of being attacked or harassed. In response, the IRC has organized patrols from the African Union peacekeeping force to accompany women and girls as the gather firewood.

Elzina Adam Ismael teaches a group of children to read in a camp outside Nyala in South Darfur. “I feel proud to do this,” she says. “The children are our future, they will build Darfur and they must learn things.”

(July 2006) The International Rescue Committee's Peter Biro has just returned from Darfur, where he found a humanitarian crisis growing worse as refugees continue to flood into the region’s many camps for displaced people.