Friday, May 19, 2023

Gaga Refugee Camp, Chad

LARRY MADOWO (voice over)CNN traveled with USAID Administrator Samantha Power to Eastern Chad. The U.S. is giving more than $100 million to support the over one million people displaced by the war across Sudan and in neighboring countries.

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: We met one woman whose eye had been gouged basically with somebody just attacking her, and she's seeking medical care here in Chad. Horrific violence, which triggers, for so many of these people, also memories of previous horrific violence.

MR. MADOWO (voice over)It’s a full circle moment for her. She was in Chad in 2004 writing in The New Yorker about Sudanese civilians fleeing the Janjaweed militia in Darfur.

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: You talk to them you feel like you're in a time warp because they're describing Janjaweed coming in with their knives and their machetes, killing people, raping women.

MR. MADOWO: Is it surreal for you being here, hearing these stories when you heard them 20 years ago as a reporter?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, I feel lucky this time, at least to be working at USAID – a big development humanitarian agency – at least there's something I can do. But fundamentally there is no substitute for the root causes getting addressed for these two warring generals to put their own power grabs aside and put the interests of these people, who are fleeing sometimes for the fifth time, in their lives.

Samantha Power Video Library
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