Emergency Response

At the Gaga camp, children from Darfur find food, shelter and ― amidst their suffering ― the will to smile.

In eastern Chad, Africare established and now manages the Gaga Refugee Camp, providing shelter, food, medical care and other aid to 20,000 Darfurians.

Darfur: "On a Knife-Edge"

"The United Nations has described the situation in Darfur as a crisis of 'enormous proportions.' The survival of the hundreds of thousands of displaced is on a knife-edge" (BBC News, May 6, 2004). Ultimately, as the atrocities have continued, more than two million Darfurians have fled their homes — over 200,000 of them crossing from Sudan into Chad.

There, Africare responded. In Ouaddai, in eastern Chad, Africare established and now manages the Gaga Refugee Camp, providing shelter, food, medical care and other aid to 20,000 Darfurians. In addition to basic shelter needs, the Gaga Camp provides a wide variety of assistance activities ― distribution of food and non-food items, construction of infrastructure, and training and provision of services in the fields of agriculture, livestock, forestry and water-and-sanitation. For example, with Africare's help, many of the refugees are regaining a sense of self-reliance by growing vegetables and other crops, then selling some of those crops in the local markets in Chad.

In addition to helping the people from Darfur, Africare distributes food and provides other assistance to Chadian host communities, which have been strained by the influx of refugees.

 

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