Mia Farrow on the Conflict in Darfur

ByABC News
June 15, 2006, 2:52 PM

— -- Q. Where in in the Darfur region of Sudan were you?

A. We went to south and north Darfur and visited refugee camps in both places. Unlike my last visit in 2004 I could not go to west Darfur which is now considered too volatile to visit. Even now the itinerary keeps changing because of the security situation. We went to Gereida and Finna camps which were outside of the town of Nyala. This is the biggest refugee camp with 126,000 people. Also visited a camp called Zam Zam in Nyala which has 30,000 people.

I was unable to visit Kama camp which I visited last time. That was at the time the largest and is now the second largest refugee camp at about 96,000 people. 18 months ago the camps were a sea of pale blue tents provide by the UN which people had pinned to the ground with twigs and whatever else they could find. People were even living under trees and bushes.

Now the improvised nature of the camps had transformed into a chilling permanence. We now see more mud roofs where the tents used to be. The support infrastructure is being provided only by humanitarian workers. Still food rations are below what they need to be and clean water is a huge problem second only to security. There are makeshift schools with a few teachers who try provide some education, this is not nearly enough, there are hardly any teachers or any money to pay these teachers.

There are only the very basic health services in the camps. In camp Zam Zam the hospital is three rooms with one doctor to service 40,000 people. I cannot even tell you how minimal the services are.

There is no ambulance for emergencies, the road into town is at least an hour long over sand. This population of internally displaced people is stopped by the government if they try to travel anywhere outside of the camps. There are also Janjaweed around all the camps that threaten the refugees if they try to leave.

It is an unbelievably volatile, fragile and tragic situation.

Q. What do you think of efforts to solve the problem?