By Kim Sengupta in Mirair, Darfur19 August 2004
They were around 3ft long, laid out in a neat row; graves of babies in a patchy field. It was difficult to see how many there were; the rain had spread the mounds of red earth and scattered the wild flowers laid on top. The babies died from lack of food, lack of medicine and infected water. It happened at a place no more than three hours' drive from Nyala, the capital of south Darfur, but deemed too dangerous for the international agencies and the United Nations to venture.
There are other children buried here, as well as some elderly people, but it is the very young who have been the most vulnerable, 22 dying in the past three weeks. That is a large number from about 500 refugees living in the open with just trees for cover from the sudden torrential rains.
There are not even the most rudimentary shelters of branches and leaves one sees among the dispossessed of Darfur. These people do not want to be seen, they are too frightened of being hunted down. Most have been burnt out of their villages by the Janjaweed Arab militia and government troops, or have abandoned them in fear of impending attacks.
Unlike other refugees they have yet to make the trek to the vast camps that have sprung up in the region because the roads are not considered safe. They have been attacked by the militia, on horses and camels. The last time they tried to make the journey three men were killed.
Refugees live and die without shelter in the land where aid agencies fear to tread....***Mortality note. Since commenting upon Reeves' latest
mortality update, I ran accross one news story that claimed that such predictions, and the numbers based upon USAID projections were inaccurate (
UN says 363 deaths recorded in Darfur camps in 5 weeks. However, there were no confirmations of the story, and after searching
WHO, including the latest situation reports for Darfur, I have been unable to find the WHO bulletin which was cited by the reporter, or any document that would confirm those numbers.
The mortality rate among this group as reported by Sengupta is indeed alarming, and suggests that the USAID forecast may be correct.