Darfur is the western region of the country of Sudan; it is bordered to the west by Libya, Chad and Central African Republic. It is about the size of France.
Around 2003 or so you may remember first reading in the news about the mass death, displacement and severe privation resulting from the fighting of the Sudanese government, government-backed militias and rebel forces. That problem has only worsened over the last twelve years. To put it in perspective, the pre-conflict population of Darfur is estimated to have been about six million people. As of January 2015, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there were 2.5 million internally displaced persons in Darfur and 367,229 Sudanese refugees in Chad. UNOCHA also reports that since December 2014, there were 32,000 confirmed newly displaced, with many more yet to be counted. And a March 17, 2015 Voice of America article reported that the chief of UN Peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous, told the UN Security Council that 450,000 people had been displaced by violence over the past year, the highest number since 2004.
This UNOCHA information, along with the latest about the humanitarian aid situation in Darfur, may be accessed on the Sudan page of the worldwide aid-monitoring website, Reliefweb: http://reliefweb.int/country/sdn
The Voice of America article, “UN Considers Drawdown of Dafur Mission,” by Margaret Besheer, may be found here: http://www.voanews.com/content/un-moves-closer-to-pulling-peacekeepers-from-troubled-darfur/2683276.html
