This campaign has now closed
Responding to the conflict in Darfur has been the largest operation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for the last four years. In a region the size of France, nearly four million people have been affected by the conflict, which started in 2003. These include two million internally displaced people many of whom fled their homes to live in camps. Since 2004, the Red Cross has helped hundreds of thousands of people living in Sudan. The main area of work of the British Red Cross has been in Gereida where a camp has been set up to help people who have lost their homes and livelihoods in Darfur. Our original expectation was to help 12,000 people in need of shelter and healthcare; in just three years this has tragically increased almost tenfold. The Gereida camp is now one of the largest such camps in the world. The Red Cross is committed to providing life-saving healthcare, shelter and clean water for people in remote areas of Darfur and for the people of Gereida. We need to raise £1 million to ensure that this work can continue.
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The Red Cross delivers a wide range of relief programmes in response to the differing needs of people in remote and hard to access parts of Darfur. The ICRC is one of the few organisations that is reaching and assisting people in need from every affected community. In Gereida camp, we provide food, medical support, shelter, clean water and seeds and tools. We also provide specialist support including nutritional care to hundreds of malnourished children. 69 trained nutrition monitors search the 5km camp to identify children in need of the specialist services. Nutrition support lasts up to three months for a single child, as long-term care is needed for a full recovery. This is an extremely successful project and thousands of children have been helped in this way. We recognise that people are better able to support themselves if they are able to remain safely in their own villages. Our mobile services help those in remote areas, which are often difficult to access. These include a flying surgical team that gives life-saving assistance to weapon-wounded, training and support of animal health workers in veterinary skills in order to protect people’s livestock, and provision of seeds and tools for farmers. We value the support we receive very highly. The Red Cross has a permanent presence in communities across the world through our sister national societies. We can therefore provide assurances that our donations are secure. We invite supporters to become as involved in our work as they wish to, so they understand the impact their contribution makes to the lives of the people we help. We want our supporters to feel as much of a sense of ownership and pride in the Red Cross as we do.