Our World

Women of Darfur Face Horrific Choice

As I was searching through articles in the newspaper and on bloglines.com, everything seemed to be fairly uninteresting to me. From campaign editorials to Vikings pride, it all seemed rather mundane. I came upon the headline "Women of Darfur Face Horrific Choice" with a caption underneath of "Refugees forced to pick between starvation, rape." As I read through the disturbing article I decided that it had enough facts and information to keep me occupied.

When we wake up in the morning, we often times have to make the "tough" choice of what to wear. The struggle of picking the blue shirt over the red shirt leaves us in a tizzy the rest of the day. Now tell me this. How would you like waking up in the morning, having to make the decision of being raped or having your brother killed? Unlike all of us, Eisa, 18, has to choose.

The article in the St. Cloud Times is about an 18-year old girl in Darfur, Africa that has constant vivid nightmares of a man that raped her, however, she is not alone. There is a major problem in Darfur, Africa that most people are completley unaware of. The government backed militias known as the Janjaweed in this location and they are terrorizing villages. Since 2003, 450,000 people have been killed due to violence and disease. This statistic is horrific and astonishing. For instance, since the war in Iraq began in 2003, there has only been 2,700 casualties. Granted, that is 2,700 too many people in my opinion, but 450,000 is about 167 times more than that. Along with that, 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes in Darfur. Luckily, the tragedy is not going completely unnoticed although it has not been stopped. The government and a rebel group reached a cease-fire agreement in May but since then rapes in the area have gone up. In a single camp near Nyala, which is a town in South Darfur state, 200 sexual assaults have been recorded by The International Rescue Committee, in a five-week period.

Women are being raped when having to leave their camps in search of firewood and grass. Without firewood and grass, they have no way of making food, resulting in starvation. Therefore, women follow the path on the Darfur countryside looking for necessities for survival in hopes of no attacks.

So the next time you're attempting to pick out an outfit, the choice between the red or blue shirt, may not seem too horrible afterall.

posted by Anonymous @ 9/19/2006 07:12:00 PM