Entry Title: " Life and Death in Darfur"
Name: Lynsey Addario, United States


Entry Description: The Genocide in Darfur began in 2003, and since then, has evolved into one of the most deadly, complicated conflicts of our time. In the early stages of the war in Darfur, the fighting lines were clear: rebels of ethnic African tribes fought against the Sudanese Government, which was backed by Arab militias throughout Darfur, primarily over access to arable land and water, and an equal allocation of government resources for blacks and Arabs. In the early days, it was easy to view the conflict as Genocide—when the government retaliated against the rebels, they held little regard for civilian deaths; it was systematic ethnic cleansing. Genocide. There are no exact figures, but since 2003, somewhere between 200,000 to 400,000 people have estimated to have died as a result of violence, sickness, or hunger caused by the crisis, and more than 2.5 million have been forced from their homes into camps for internally displaced people in Sudan’s Darfur region, and refugee camps in neighboring Chad. Seven years on into the Darfur conflict, the media continues to portray Darfur as an emergency situation--as the same war it was 6 years ago; it is not. The humanitarian crisis and war in Sudan’s Darfur has evolved into a combination of tedious tribal warfare—ethnic African tribes killing other ethnic Africans, Arab tribes fighting amongst themselves, a splintered rebel movement which often provokes the government in areas heavily populated by civilians, and then withdraws from the area leaving the civilians exposed to government bombing campaigns, and the fundamental conflict between tribes’ access to grazing land for cattle, to water, to resources. The civilians of Darfur have lived so long in camps for internally displaced people, that they have become almost entirely dependant upon the United Nations and foreign aid intervention.

Lynsey Addario is a photojournalist based in Istanbul, Turkey, where she photographs for National Geographic, The New York Times, The NYT Magazine, Time, and Fortune, among others. Lynsey began photographing professionally in 1996—with no professional photographic training or studies--for The Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina, where she worked over the course of one year before returning to New York. In 1997, she began freelancing for the the Associated Press, where she became a consistent contributor for three years. Throughout her time in New York, Lynsey completed several overseas self-assignments, with Cuba as a focus. In 1997, she traveled to Havana, Cuba, to work on a series of photo essays focused on the influence of Capitalism on the young generation of Cubans, and returned to Havana in 1998 for the Pope’s visit, and every year thereafter until 2002 to continue documenting life under one of the last communist regimes. In January 2003, she moved to Istanbul to cover the Middle East. She soon traveled to northern and central Iraq, where she spent almost two years covering the Iraq war for The New York Times. In 2004, she also began her coverage of the ongoing conflict in Darfur, where she continues to work today, covering Sudanese refugee camps in Chad and burnt-out, abandoned villages in Darfur, documenting internally displaced people and the rebel groups in Darfur. Lynsey’s recent bodies of work include: A feature on Bhutan for National Geogrpahic Magazine; Sexual assault in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sponsored by UNFPA and the Columbia College of Women in the Arts in Chicago; The Talibanization of Pakistan for the New York Times Magazine; Social and political coverage in Iran in 2005; the wars in Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Afghanistan. She recently completed a series on children in countries across Africa for The New York Times.