The first scientific survey to assess the deadly nature of the conflict in the Sudan's Darfur area has found that death rates there were three to 10 times higher than those normally found in sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the gravity of the crisis.
Experts say the survey -- a rare study of people fleeing violence -- could be used to hold those behind the killings accountable for their actions.
Between April and June of this year, Dr. Evelyn Depoortee of the Epicenter in Paris, together with researchers from the French arm of the relief organization Doctors Without Borders, surveyed 215,400 people taking refuge in four locations in West Darfur to compare death rates in the region before and after the people were driven from their homes.
Their findings were being published yesterday on the Web site of The Lancet medical journal.
"Humanitarian aid workers have long suspected, and occasionally shown, that the events precipitating displacement and the period of relocation itself are especially dangerous, but clear epidemiological evidence of this increased risk is rare," according to an independent critique of the survey by Bradley Woodruff and Reinhard Kaiser of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The bloodletting in Darfur began in February last year, when two non-Arab African rebel groups launched attacks primarily on government and military targets to press demand for a greater share of power and resources for the region.
The government is accused of trying to put down the rebellion by backing armed Arab herdsmen known as Janjaweed who long have competed with villagers over Darfur's scarce resources. The escalating violence has been described by the US as genocide. The UN has said Darfur is the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
The survey, the most scientifically accurate study of the death toll from the conflict, included 43 percent of the estimated 500,000 displaced within West Darfur.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
RSS