Darfur Women Speak

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) sent a team of four experts to gather an in-depth picture of the lives and concerns of Darfuri women now living in the Farchana Refugee Camp in eastern Chad. Eighty-eight women sat with PHR's team of three physicians and a human rights researcher and spoke candidly and openly about their lives in Darfur, the horrific attacks that drove them from their villages, their harrowing flight to Chad, and the struggles of their daily lives in the camp.

The team found that many of these women had been sexually violated in Darfur, and many have been raped since arriving at the camp in Chad. They risk sexual assault on an everyday basis when they leave the camp to collect firewood. Shame and fear of further violence or rejection by their families lead most of these women to suffer these indignities in silence.

In the coming weeks and months, PHR will be posting photographs, findings, and narratives from its assessment and asking you to take action to prevent future violence against women and to support care for those who have already been harmed.

Some of the women PHR met with had first spoken bravely and boldly about their frustrations in the Farchana Manifesto.

The Farchana Manifesto

In the Farchana camp on June 5, 2008, seven women were rounded up for public humiliation and torture: tied-up, whipped, and beaten with sticks of firewood. Their supposed “crime”? Working outside of the camp to earn money for their families. Shamed as prostitutes, these women were “fined” – forcibly deprived of goods, money, and food ration cards. Though there is no proof, it is likely that at least some of these women became pregnant as a result of rape.

After the brutality, a group of eight Darfuri women gathered to give voice to their shared lament. They wrote a one-page document in Arabic, in hope of shedding light on the plight of women refugees and opening a dialogue with the world. This document made its way from the Farchana camp into the hands of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR ). We call it the Farchana Manifesto.

The manifesto speaks of the challenges and fears faced by women refugees from Darfur, especially, in their words, the “deprivation of our liberties and absence of freedom of expression.”

For more information, please click HERE