March 17, 2007: Reports from Darfur

Relief and human rights organizations report on their projects in Darfur.

Photographs (from top to bottom):
Refugees from Dafur: Bahai Refugee Camp, October 2004
© Michal Ronnen Safdie
Refugee from Dafur: Bahai Refugee Camp. Border of Dafur, Sudan and Chad, October 2004
© Michal Ronnen Safdie, 2004
A Darfurian mother and her children arriving in a refugee camp in eastern Chad
© Mark Brecke
Refugee woman in Iridimi camp, Eastern Chad. She and her family escaped their village in Darfur following attacks by armed militia. May 15, 2004
© Hélène Caux
Refugee in a camp, at the beginning of a rainstorm in the Kass region. Sudan, 2004
© Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos, 2004
Young girls leave a camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) to gather firewood.
© Ron Haviv/VII
Burned Village Hangala, North Dafur. A Sudanese Liberation Army soldier walks through the remains of Hangala village, which was burned by Janjaweed several months before, August 27, 2004
© Lynsey Addario, 2004

Program

• 11 am: Save Darfur Coalition more
• 12 am: Human Rights Watch more
•   2 pm: UN World Food Programme more
•   3 pm: Caritas international more
•   4 pm: Society for Threatened Peoples more
•   5 pm: Deutsche Welthungerhilfe e.V. more
•   6 pm: Doctors Without Borders more

11 am: Save Darfur Coalition

Lawrence Rossin, ret. ambassador, Coordinator for International Affairs at the Save Darfur Coalition, will give a talk on the coalition’s activities worldwide.

The Save Darfur Coalition is an international alliance of over 170 church, human rights and relief organizations with various ethnic, religious and political affiliations. The goal of the coalition is to increase public awareness of the spreading slaughter in Darfur and to prompt a concerted social and political reaction to the atrocities that are threatening the lives of people in the region of Western Sudan.

Before joining the Save Darfur Coalition as its Coordinator for International Affairs, Lawrence Rossin served as Assistant Secretary General and executive member of the UN missions in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and Kosovo (UNMIK). Previously he served on the US National Security Council and held a number of diplomatic positions in the US State Department.

For online donations, please visit the website of the Save Darfur Coalition:
www.savedarfur.org

12 am: Human Rights Watch

On a research trip along the border between Chad and Sudan, Human Rights Watch workers gave children paper and colored pencils to keep them busy while the researchers were interviewing their parents. Without any guidance, the children drew pictures of their war experiences: the attacks of the mounted Janjaweed militias, the bombings, the executions and the rapes, the razing of villages and their flight to Chad. Now they are on display in the exhibition "Smallest Witnesses" - children's drawings and photographs from Darfur in the Jewish Museum Berlin.

Leslie Lefkow, Darfur researcher for Human Rights Watch, reports on her experiences with Darfur refugees. Since 1997 she has been reporting on the human rights abuses in Sudan (in English). In February 2004 in Chad she interviewed refugees from Darfur and wrote the first Human Rights Watch Report on Darfur.

For donations, please visit the website Human Rights Watch:
www.hrw.org

2 pm: UN World Food Programme

Darfur activities by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the world's largest humanitarian organization, are presented by Ralf Suedhoff from the WFP's Berlin office. The WFP's largest relief campaign at this time is being carried out in Sudan, with the aim of providing 5.5 million of the needy with food aid in 1997.

Ralf Suedhoff will draw on video and photographic material to elucidate the situation of the people in Darfur.

For online donations, please visit the website of the UN World Food Programme:
www.wfp.org

3 pm: Caritas international

Jürgen Lieser will present the work of Caritas international (talk and film). To date Caritas relief has been provided to 325,000 people in Darfur. One of their main goals is to improve the refugees' medical care, building 21 hospitals and a mobile clinic. To increase the effectiveness of the relief effort, all projects by the Catholic relief organization are conducted jointly with Protestant partners from the Diakonie. A total of 35 international and 350 Sudanese workers are employed in Southern and Western Darfur.

For online donations, please visit the website of the Caritas international (in German):
www.caritas-international.de

4 pm: Society for Threatened Peoples

Ulrich Delius, director of the Africa department of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV), will discuss the consequences of the human rights abuses and the difficult relief situation in Sudan with two Sudanese living in Berlin exile. The discussion will provide an opportunity to learn about the situation in Sudan from the point of view of the people affected.

The GfbV is an international human rights organization that emerged from the "Aktion Biafra-Hilfe", founded in 1968. It assists persecuted and threatened ethnic and religious minorities, nationalities and native communities.

For online donations, please visit the website of the Society for Threatened Peoples:
www.gfbv.de

5 pm: Deutsche Welthungerhilfe e.V.

Jörg Heinrich, Program Manager for Sudan, presents the field activities of the Deutsche Welthungerhilfe e. V. (DWHH) with a short film and a talk. The DWHH is one of the largest NGOs active in Sudan. Since 1998 it has sponsored 47 projects there with a total volume of 148 million euros. At this time it is conducting four projects in Darfur, providing over 400,000 refugees in Northern Darfur with emergency and survival aid.

For online donations, please visit the website of the Deutschen Welthungerhilfe e. V.:
www.welthungerhilfe.de

6 pm: Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières

With more than 100 international and a good 2,000 national workers, the Darfur campaign of Doctors without Borders is one of their largest international projects in years. Claudia Thomas is a doctor who spent several months in 2006 as a medical team leader for a hospital and several health centers in Western Darfur. With a colleague from Doctors without Borders who aided Darfur refugees in Eastern Chad, she will report on the situation and their work in the field.

For online donations, please visit the website of Doctors Without Borders:
www.doctorswithoutborders.org

Attendance is free of charge.

When: Saturday, 17 March 2007, 11 to 7 pm
Where: Jewish, Libeskind Building, Old Building, ground level (Auditorium), Lindenstr. 9-14, 10969 Berlin
Contact: Anja Butzek, Tel.: +49 (0)30 259 93 435