Villages Destroyed along Sudan/Chad Border
By August 2004, there were approximately 150,000 Darfuri civilians living in refugee camps in Eastern Chad, the majority being children.
At the end of 2010, the International Displacement Center (IDMC) in conjunction with the United Nations estimated that there were still 2,666,115 people internally displaced in the Darfur Region. When divided by state, 508,499 of these internally Displaced Persons (IDP) were from North Darfur, 1,410,704 were from South Darfur while 746,912 were from Western Darfur (United Nations et al., 2010). Due to a lack of security in many parts of the region, resettlement of refugees and IDP has been very slow despite several peace agreements signed by parties engaged in the fighting.
Living in refugee camps breeds many problems in society, and children grow up dissillusioned by such challenging conditions. If the physical and emotional needs of the youth in such environments is not effectively addressed, there is a great likelihood that these refugee and IDP camps will become recruiting grounds for rebels--thus continuing a vicious cycle of violence.