Displaced children at one of many refugee camps.
"We're coWorld Vision'sncerned that this crisis could worsen in the coming weeks," says Rein Paulsen, Senior Director for Emergency Response. Many communities in the conflict zone are still recovering from the 2004 Asia tsunami, when families lost everything. Now they've been uprooted from their homes again, and have no way to feed or educate their children."
As fighting has intensified in the past week, World Vision has been distributing water, food, mats, tarps for shelter, water containers and other essential supplies to families living in displacement (IDP) camps in the East, being the hands and feet of Christ. The protection and well-being of children in the camps is a key focus of the agency's work.
10 year old Nishadini has already escaped from fighting three times in recent months: "We walked for five days without food and rested very little. When we found a little water, we drank," she says of her family's most recent ordeal. "We all lay down the moment we heard a plane. When we got up so many people lay dead. We would just leave them there and keep going," she shakes her head. Nishadini and her family of seven now live in Iyankerni IDP camp in Batticaloa.
Over the past several months, World Vision has distributed aid to families trapped in the conflict areas in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, including two resettlement areas, seven communities where the agency already works, and in IDP camps.
Sri Lanka's two-decade-old ethnic conflict has claimed hundreds of civilian lives. Despite a ceasefire signed in 2002 -- which has now expired -- violence has continued to plague civilian communities, closing schools for months at a time and forcing families to move frequently in search of safety.
World Vision has been working in Sri Lanka since 1977. Current programs in community development, emergency relief and tsunami recovery span 22 of the country's districts.
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