VANESSA VICK PHOTOGRAPHY

Chad

Arab militias, called the Janjaweed, have forced black Africans off their land in the Darfur region of western Sudan through a campaign of killing, rape and pillage. The Arab militias equipped by the Sudanese government, are accused of killing up to 30,000 darker-skinned Africans, raping women and girls, destroying crops and polluting water supplies in a campaign that United Nations officials say constitutes ethnic cleansing.

More than one million people have fled to refugee camps in Sudan and eastern Chad.
   
"Medicine sans Frontiers" has set up a health center for malnourished children in Farchana, a camp that is home to 12,000 refugees.
   
New arrivals are registered in order to get food aid.
     
  
Children attend classes in a school hastily set up in Farchana.
   
Ahmed Omar Saboon fled to the border a month ago with his three wives and 14 children. They have been settled in Bredjing, home to 40,000 refugees.
   
Aid organizations are scrambling to try and provide basic necessities such as food and shelter to the 200,000 refugees in Chad before the rains make it impossible to travel by road.
     
  
Women wait for their ration of food to be distributed.
   
At her UNHCR tent this woman makes a fence out of empty grain sacks.
   
The government has exploited the rising tension between the impoverished African villagers who form the rebels' base and the nomadic Arab herders who have been competing with them for what remains of the region's arable land after decades of deforestation.
     
  
It is not likely that any of the refugees will be able to return to their home land for many years.
   
Rashida Mohamed Yosif came to Chad with her four children after her husband was killed by the Janjaweed militia.
   
In the midst of this unforgiving environment, there is widespread malnutrition and dehydration, respiratory and other infectious diseases, as well as the emotional trauma of being displaced people and survivors of war.