Darfur Violence Through the Eyes of Children
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Enlarge A Sudanese child's drawing shows men on a camel firing their weapons. Dr. Annie Sparrow/Human Rights Watch
This drawing shows a helicopter and plane attacking a village in Darfur. Dr. Annie Sparrow/Human Rights Watch
Morning Edition, August 1, 2005 · Earlier this year, aid workers at a refugee camp in Chad, on Sudan's western border, passed out crayons and paper to children while Human Rights Watch officials interviewed their parents. Without prompting or instruction, the young artists put pen to paper and produced some harrowing images -- the visions of an unfolding genocide in Sudan's Darfur region.
Minky Worden, the media director at Human Rights Watch in New York, describes one of the pictures: "You see the government helicopters bombing the villages. You see armored personnel carriers rolling into the villages… And the amazing thing about this drawing is the ability of this child, age 13 or so, to make stick figures show absolute terror."
Some of the drawings, made by children aged 8 to 17, are on exhibit at New York University's Edgar Bronfman Center through Labor Day, the first stop in a national tour.
