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HOW CAN WE SIT BACK AND WATCH?
M I A '08
A trio of refugee girls walks through the Sudanese desert. The rusty red headscarf of the girl in center breaks up the monotonous bluish gray of a cloudless sky that stretches behind her for untold miles as she sets out to look for firewood. Her clothing is immaculate: a broad piece of gauzy off-white fabric tied like an impromptu obi around a pale ochre dress. She is one of over 70,000 refugees in the camp Abu Shouk, where she has taken shelter from a brutal civil war. In 2003, African farmers in the Sudanese region of Darfur rose in defiance against the Arab-dominated government. They were repressed by government troops and by the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed (literally “men on horses”), who attacked their villages. The conflict has displaced over two million people, who live in political limbo as the international community takes tentative steps to appease the conflict. The photograph of the three girls was taken at 7:03 a.m. in northern Darfur. Photojournalist Ron Haviv was carrying his digital camera, a heavy, black Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, and had, in the past four weeks of traveling between refugee camps, already taken over 10,000 photographs.
As the sun rose over the desert, he encountered the three girls. They were shy, as Haviv approached with his interpreter. But soon they told their stories and spoke of their lives in the nearby camp: they were provided with shelter and food, but no means to cook. They were too poor to buy the little firewood available in the severely deforested area. To help their families, the girls often walked up to ten hours a day to find firewood, and sometimes spent the night in the desert—where there is ever-present danger. Haviv was in Darfur for UNICEF to document the lives of children in the refugee camps. These three girls were only 12, but Haviv had heard of girls as young as eight being raped by the marauding Janjaweed, government troops, or gangs. At Abu Shouk, young women usually collect the firewood. “They hope that if it is the young girls they won’t be raped because of their age,” said Haviv. “Unfortunately it does happen.” The early morning light infused the sand with an orange glow as Haviv photographed the group headed by the girl with the rust-red headscarf. With an aperture of 2.8, the shallow depth of field made her determined expression become the focal point, as her friends and the landscape blurred behind her.
August 2006 Suffering for Sale by Ann Tornkvist
