As the conflict and on-going humanitarian crisis worsens in Darfur and Chad, Tearfund is appealing for emergency funds.
Two million people are estimated to be displaced across Darfur due to the conflict, higher than the number displaced at the time of the previous 2004 appeal.
Furthermore, 140,000 people are internally displaced in Chad as some 240,000 refugees have fled from Darfur into Chad since the crisis began in 2003.
Tearfund is running water and sanitation programmes, with supplementary feeding, nutrition and health education projects in the displacement camps in Darfur, as well as reaching communities across different Sudanese and Chadian ethnic groups.
Nigel Timmins, Tearfund Operations Manager for Sudan has just returned from the region. He said, "Since this humanitarian crisis began, four years ago, we have been responding and adjusting our response when access to locations is restricted by the fighting. With the conflict in Darfur spreading into Chad we are seeing suffering and fear on a chilling scale.
"Hundreds of thousands of people are, at best in camps that are spilling over and worse still, caught between marauding rebel incursions across the border. We have been getting relief to as many people as we are able to reach, but the situation is not improving and we have to be ready to support civilians affected for as long as they need."
It is estimated that over 200,000 people have died since the conflict in Darfur began in early 2003, many as a direct result of the violence. The conflict was violently escalated by an attack on government targets by a rebel group claiming the region was being neglected by Khartoum.
