It is Sunday and the market at the Farchana refugee camp in eastern Chad is half empty. Mahamet Arum, a Sudanese refugee from the town of Diiba in western Darfur, is setting out his wares. Home-made perfumes, hair clips and skin creams crowd his little stall. Arum has spent the past year living in the Farchana camp.

Back home he was also a merchant. Like most of the other 17 500 refugees living in the camp, he is waiting for the situation to improve before he returns. He says he does not have much information about what is happening back home, only what he hears from time to time from friends.

This should soon change. In a few weeks, the Voice of the Ouaddei, a radio station run by the United States NGO Internews, will start its broadcasts from the regional capital of Abeche, where the station is based.

Broadcasts will be relayed in Farchana, where a correspondent for the camp has already been recruited. The aim is to provide the refugee population with information about the peace process in Darfur, as well as educational programming and entertainment for all the residents in the region, Chadian and Sudanese.

“One of the most important things we cover is the Darfur peace process,” says David Smith, Internews country director. “The people living in the camps often don’t even know there is a peace process.”

In the town of Iriba, 300km to the north, Radio Absoun has been on the air for the past six months. Its target audience is the 45 000-strong refugee population living in three camps in the surrounding areas.

In line with Internews objectives, half of the on-air staff at Radio Absoun are female. “Initially the men in the area objected,” says Smith, “but six months later those attitudes have already changed somewhat.” In the next month another station will be set up in the southern area of Goz Beida, where an additional 30 000 people are living.

According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, (UNHCR) there are 215 000 Sudanese refugees living in 12 refugee camps in eastern Chad. Over the past year, there has been growing concern about insecurity in the camps, as Sudanese rebel groups have repeatedly attempted to recruit new followers.

In March, between 4 000 and 5 000 refugees, mainly youths, disappeared from the camps around Goz Beida over the course of several days. According to local sources they were brought to a military training camp south of Goz Beida, where they were subjected to harsh treatment. The majority were later released or managed to flee and have returned to the refugee camps.

Among those forcibly recruited were five young peer-group leaders working for the Refugee Education Trust, an NGO founded by Sadaka Ogata, the former director of UNHCR.

George Thang’Wa, the director of the trust’s operations in Chad, says that three of the five were allowed to return to the camp after explaining to rebel recruiters that they wanted to continue their work as youth-group leaders and life-skills teachers.

Thang’Wa says that most young refugees are frustrated by the fact that their education has been interrupted by the conflict in Darfur. At present, education in the camps is limited to primary school, leaving many youths with nothing to do but worry about their future.

The trust and Internews are attempting to address this gap by providing education and progamming targeting youth. Thang’Wa says that such activities can act as powerful deterrents against recruitment by rebel groups: “Rebel groups play on the ignorance of the communities … the minute the refugees are aware that there are other options besides fighting, they are unlikely to want to join the rebel groups.”