“What Do You Mean You’re Still a Refugee?!”
At some point, we forgot all about Darfur’s refugees. They’re still there. And the UN has run out of money to feed them.
Darfur? Still?!
I know, I know, it all sounds really really 2005.
And in a way it is.
It was from 2003 to 2006 that most refugees fled the mind-twisting brutality of the genocide in Darfur.
We were all still listening to Avril Lavigne.
Barack Obama was an unheard-of Illinois State Senator.
George Clooney was fresh off the set of E.R.
People were lining up overnight for the latest Harry Potter book.
It’s been a while.
It was then that hundreds of thousands of Darfuris scrambled out of their huts in a panic, their villages under attack, and literally walked hundreds of miles across the border to one of the refugee camps the UN was scrambling to set up in eastern Chad.
Yes, Chad.
That’s how bad they had it: these people took one look around them and said “screw this, I’m walking to Chad.”
For years, in Darfur, there wasn’t even a pretense that it was one armed group against another.
Attacking the villages where civilians lived was what government milita did first, and mostly.
But Darfur was ages ago, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?
Surely they sorted this all out somehow at some point. I mean, they must have. Otherwise, we’d still be hearing about it in the news.
Wouldn’t we?
If only.
Almost 300,000 Darfuris are still living in Chad, huddled into camps run by the UN’s Refugee Agency, the UNHCR.
They can’t integrate into local communities that were already dirt poor and stretched to the breaking point even before they got there.
A generation of Darfuri kids is growing up in these camps. They’re going to school in the camps, hearing stories of villages they’re supposedly “from” but have never been to in a country they don’t remember and may well never get to see.
They still can’t go home. They’d be killed.
And no third country wants to invite them to resettle there.
And they keep coming: last year, an additional 30,000 darfuris reached UNHCR camps in Chad. Because, back in Darfur, the mass atrocities never actually stopped.
You might think it doesn’t really matter that you’ve forgotten all about Darfur’s refugees.
But there’s a hitch: the UN Refugee Agency still has to care for them.
And now that everyone’s forgotten about them, the UN is finding it hard to find the the resources it needs to feed them.
Very hard.
On July 1st, UNHCR made a chilling announcement.
The agency’s basically run out of money to care for refugees throughout Africa. They said without $189 million extra this year, they’re going to forced to massively cut down on the assistance to refugees all over the continent.
There’s just not enough money to buy and deliver enough food to the refugees who need it. It really is that simple.
In Eastern Chad, from this month, the rations being distributed to refugees are just 850 calories per person per day.
850 calories.
Think about what that means.
That’s about one cup of uncooked grain. Cooked, it’s three small bowls of rice and lentils for the whole day.
That’s not enough. Those are starvation rations.
UNHCR warns that refugees are starting to resort to desperate measures to raise a cash to supplement their rations. We’re talking parents selling their underage daughters off to marriage to buy a little extra rice. Or what the UN refers to simply as “survival sex”.
Break it all down and the world is on the verge of witnessing something unprecedented:
A slow burn famine inside UN facilities built for the protection of those same people.
This is a crisis born entirely of our indifference and disinterest. It’s intolerable. Unthinkable. Impossible.
But it’s happening.
And mass indifference is making it possible.
Politicians know full well we’ve collectively tossed Darfur into a time-capsule together with other stuff from the early-aughts we don’t really think about anymore. The Sopranos. Malcolm in the Middle. High School Musical. Darfur.
That’s why UNHCR’s urgent appeal passed by without any fuss at all. Our politicians are under no pressure. Zero. Ignoring Africa’s refugee crisis is easy for them, because you’re doing it too.
After all, had you heard about any of this in the media before you read this? No?
See?
Unless…
Unless you find the courage to take this moment to say:
NO damn it, I’m NOT ok with this!
Unless we find the energy and the courage to put this issue back on the agenda. Today.
So we’re banding together to launch a new campaign.
Our goal: to make sure the world’s governments fund UNHCR fully this year.
We’re challenging you to find out for yourself what it mean to live on Darfuri refugee rations even just for one day.
We’re calling it The 850 Calorie Challenge, and we want you to take it on.
Because the reality of what we’re putting African refugees through is never going to hit home until you live it, in the flesh, even if it’s just for a short time.
We want you to Tweet about it. To put it on Facebook. To make videos about it and post them. We want you to tell all your friends and everyone in your family what it’s like to live on African refugee rations for just one day.
Let’s make this story A Story again. Let’s get UNHCR’s urgent appeal funded.
Ready to take the challenge?
Check out 850Calories.com for details.
