Ninety-nine percent of the women living in internally displaced people's camps in the Darfur are women and children, whilst the men are variously fighting in rebel groups, dead, or their whereabouts simply unknown.

Routinely subjected to abuse, rape, and sometimes abduction, women and children are the biggest victims in a conflict which has been described as a "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" in the southern part of Sudan.

Within the camps, women are largely protected, but just metres outside, as soon as they venture out on "firewood missions," Jangaweed, government militia and others lie in wait.

Speaking at a press conference in Accra Tuesday, held to raise awareness about the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur, Jane Alao, a social worker, pointed to not only conflict in the ostracised part of the Sudan, but also intense social disjuncture caused by this separation of men and women and by the escalation of gender-based violence.

Mrs Alao is a social assistant at the Amal Centre for Rehabilitation and Treatment of Victims of Torture, in Southern Darfur. She treats and counsels thousands of women and children who have been raped and attacked, although she admits that many more non-governmental organisations like hers are needed if they are to make any headway.

"You see the situation and ask, what the hell in the world is happening?" she said, describing how 60-year-old women are being raped - "it doesn"t even matter if she is the mother or grandmother" – and how children as young as eight are also being violated, often in full view of their family and community.

"Sometimes the attacker will say, 'Either we will kill your father or your brother, or you give us the small girl to rape.’ They feel they don’t have any choice; the rape takes place in front of the whole community, and then on top of that the girls can be blamed when they get pregnant."

Often the girls suffer from post-traumatic stress, depression and isolation following their attacks – and some women fall victim multiple times. "No one cares, they are treated like a dirty person, an outlaw – not looked at and sometimes even deprived food," said Mrs Alao.

HIV/Aids is an increasing problem, unsurprisingly: "If someone is raped by a group of three to ten men, that means the same perpetrators go and do the same act; that means there’s a high risk," she explained in an interview with The Statesman afterwards.

She said that the women of Darfur are not unique as victims, but that in any conflict women tend to constitute some 80 or 90 percent of the victims.

Now, education and awareness is important, not only amongst the IDP camp communities to make them better able of dealing with the attacks, but also amongst the humanitarian and peace-keeping community.

"Often people don’t understand why it happens, and tend to accuse those women that it’s their fault," she said. "It becomes very important to people – to let them know that women have the right to say no no no no no no."

Mrs Alao is part of a delegation from Sudan who are here for the current Africa Commission on Human and People’s Rights summit. Amongst her male colleagues, there is a growing awareness of how women and gender-based violence fit within the wider issue of conflict in the Darfur.

However, women’s issues are often still not high enough up the agenda, she told The Statesman. According to her, the African Union and other human rights and humanitarian bodies, "tend to focus on other things and leave women aside as if it’s not important… But it’s really important," she reiterated.

Between 500,000 and 2 million people are thought to have died in the conflict, which reached a height in 2003. Darfur activists are now seeking to raise awareness about the crisis before the African Union summit in Accra in July, where they hope it will be given some prominence.