Madam, - In his comments on Trócaire's current radio advertisement on Darfur, Paul Griffin (September 26th) suggests we should have allowed the child featured to tell his story in his own words.
In fact this advertisement is based on actual interviews with children in a refugee camp along Darfur's border with Chad, where they were asked to describe their situation in drawings and words. That exercise resulted in vivid and disturbing depictions of the violence and atrocities they have witnessed in their short lives. The script for our radio ad was adapted from these interviews. It had to be toned down because of the explicit descriptions of violence against the mothers and sisters of these children.
As your reader suggested, through our campaign we are giving Darfur's children a voice to tell the world what is happening to them today. More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and 2 million remain homeless. We hear many shocking stories of the appalling violence to which Darfuris have been subjected.
We make no apologies if these stories are emotional or upset the public. Thankfully, the response to our campaign once again reflects the extraordinary generosity of Irish people to those in real need.
Trócaire is also asking people to call on the Irish and UK governments to help the people of Sudan by insisting that the existing 2005 peace agreement between the north and south of Sudan be implemented in full, and by supporting new peace talks for Darfur. Further details are available at www.trocaire.org.
- Yours, etc,
JUSTIN KILCULLEN, Director, Trócaire, Maynooth, Co Kildare.