Sudanese refugee camps, Chad

Sudan, an African giant with nine borders, has only been peaceful for eleven years since it became independent in 1955. The civil war started because of an opposition between the dominant Arab and Muslim North and a South African South that was mainly Christian and animist. In 2003, the conflict has intensified and changed in the Darfour region, in the southwest of the country, where Arab Muslims and Black Muslims are fighting. In just one year, the Janjaweed Arab militia armed by the government has forced over 1 million people to leave their homes and take to the road. According to the UN, since 2008, 260.000 Sudanese people have sought refuge in Chad and over 243.000 of them are housed in twelve camps in the eastern part of this country. Today, civil wars are much more common than conflicts between nations. Between 2001 and 2010, 27 out of 29 registered great armed conflicts in the world occurred within a country thus directly involving the civilian population. Burnt villages, looting, rapes, murders and the systematic destruction of means of subsistence: the populations are even more powerless when faced with this violence because it often comes from their own government.