The urgent appeal to the French, Italian and Japanese governments was expressed in a joint letter of Save the Children Alliance, CARE International, Oxfam International and Caritas Internationalis, the latter explained in a statement sent to ZENIT.
The Catholic organization’s note emphasized that at the end of August the United Nations reported that it had received only about half of the $531 million it requested to help those who have fled from the violence in Darfur.
«Several hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and now they face hunger and sickness,» Caritas Internationalis added. «A human tragedy is unfolding on both sides of the border between Sudan and Chad.»
The tragedy, which has left 35,000 dead and 2 million displaced, started in February of 2003 with the confrontation of self-defense rebel groups and the Khartoum government.
The Sudanese government is accused of abandoning Darfur, because the majority of the latter’s population is black, and of funding the «janjaweed» Arab militia, which for two years has terrorized non-Arab peoples in the region.
