Sudan (Darfur)-Chad Border Region Confirmed Damaged and Destroyed Villages

The U.S. Department of State/Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU) serves as a U.S. government (USG) interagency center to identify, collect, analyze, and disseminate unclassified information critical to USG decision makers and partners. This is in preparation for and response to humanitarian emergencies worldwide and to promote best practices for humanitarian information management. The unit serves many parts of the USG, and these connections enable HIU to tap into multiple streams and sources of information to create unclassified, multisector analytical products that more comprehensively depict complex humanitarian emergencies.

The HIU team working on Darfur issues facilitated the sharing of data on damage and destruction of villages throughout Darfur. In addition, HIU used that data and combined it with information from multiple sources, incorporating commercial imagery and data on displaced populations to produce a series of updated maps and graphics titled Sudan (Darfur)-Chad Border Region Confirmed Damaged and Destroyed Villages.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Andrew S. Natsios and other representatives of the USG used these products in briefings to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the U.N. Security Council as part of a widespread diplomatic push to reveal the gravity of the situation and to focus international attention on the crisis. In a technological first for the State Department, a cable to multiple embassies referred addressees to a Web site to download unclassified maps and graphics with detailed images of villages destroyed. The cable called for a demarche to elicit response to the Darfur crisis. In addition to their use for diplomatic purposes, these products were used in the press and on the senate floor as well as by USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and human rights and relief organizations responding directly to the crisis.

The map incorporated DigitalGlobe QuickBird commercial imagery of refugee camps and destroyed villages, internally displaced person camps, accessibility during the rainy season, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees' refugee camps, roads, airfields, and damaged and destroyed village data. It shows how these variables spatially relate to one another.