**Sudanese women who escaped the Darfur conflict to eastern Chad are facing high levels of sexual violence, an Amnesty International report says.**Despite the presence of a UN force, women and girls are being attacked when they leave 12 designated camps in search of water, the report says.
It also documents cases of refugees being attacked inside the camps by Chadian aid workers.
Chad’s government has denied that any Chadian has attacked a Sudan refugee.
Since 2003 about 250,000 Darfuri refugees have fled the conflict in Sudan, where mass rape of civilians had allegedly been used as as strategy to displace entire villages.
The rights group says in many cases the women are too scared to report the abuse, or attackers escape without being brought to justice.
‘Weak policing’
The BBC’s Celeste Hicks in Chad says life is tough for the refugees, who scratch out a living from the bleak sands of the Sahel.
In temperatures well in excess of 40C (104F), most women are forced to leave the camps to look for extra water and wood for cooking.
Amnesty claims this is when they are most at risk of attack as many local Chadians resent the fact that Sudanese get fuel, food, water and medicines, but they do not.
Many of the women said they were worried about being abandoned by their families or shunned by the community if the attacks came to light.
Our correspondent says the UN peacekeeping mission, Minurcat, is providing security patrols in the east, but is suffering from lack of funds.
Currently it has only about half of its mandated soldiers.
A special UN-trained Chadian police unit, the DIS, is supposed to investigate rape cases, but many women complained that they were not taken seriously.
Minurcat’s Michel Bonnardeaux says part of the problem is that weak policing and judicial capacity means cases are not prosecuted.
Few of the 278 people arrested by the DIS in 2009 have been brought to trial, our reporter says.