More than a year after the start of the war in Sudan, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said Friday it remains extremely concerned about shocking levels of violence and devastating risks as many areas across the country remain beyond the reach of aid organizations. Among these areas is Sudan's North Darfur state, where intensifying clashes between the warring parties are preventing aid deliveries to the wider Darfur region.
Since fighting erupted on April 15, 2023, sparked by a power struggle between two rival generals, Sudan has witnessed shocking levels of violence, plunging the country into a devastating humanitarian and protection crisis.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia are each seeking to control the country. The two sides have made it nearly impossible for aid agencies and humanitarian supplies to reach civilians.
Omdurman
“For the first time since the conflict started, a UNHCR team reached Omdurman in Sudan’s Khartoum State, a city severely impacted by the conflict,“ said Olga Sarrado Mur, UNHCR spokesperson, Friday at a press briefing in Geneva.
“UNHCR staff saw the massive destruction caused by the war, with vast needs and high levels of suffering among a population which has been out of reach to humanitarians for months.”
During the two-day mission to Omdurman, home to over 12,000 refugees and more than 54,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), the team met with local officials and people impacted by the conflict to identify needs and understand protection risks.
“Displaced families, including Sudanese and refugees who were in Sudan before the war, told UNHCR of their struggles to get enough food due to soaring prices, leading to fears of children becoming malnourished,“ Sarrado Mur said.
“Displaced people do not have adequate shelter, with many living in overcrowded conditions in gathering sites located mainly in schools. While two hospitals remain open, there is not enough medicine, especially for those with chronic illnesses. “
The UNHCR spokesperson said pregnant women had no access to prenatal care. People also expressed serious concerns about their safety, with reports of increased sexual violence and limited legal support, while many were severely traumatized.
The UN agency identified relevant national authorities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other community groups on the ground to whom it could provide support and supplies.
Darfur
Beyond Khartoum State, escalating hostilities in Darfur's El Fasher town are exacerbating an already perilous protection situation for civilians. Movement restrictions on key roads are preventing people from fleeing to safer areas, forcing them to seek shelter in severely overcrowded displacement sites or open spaces.
Since early April this year, the Rapid Support Forces have launched several large-scale attacks on villages west of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. As fighting between the SAF and RSF escalates in North Darfur, more than 36,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the city.
Dozens of villages have reportedly been targeted, some razed to the ground, killing innocent people and destroying public property and crops. Indiscriminate violence, including sexual violence, and cases of separated and missing children are on the rise.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned Friday that an attack on El Fasher would put hundreds of thousands of children at risk. In a statement, the agency's executive director, Catherine Russell, urged the parties to the conflict to step back from a dangerous confrontation in the town.
“Recent attacks on more than a dozen villages in western El-Fasher have resulted in horrific reports of violence, including sexual violence, children injured and killed, homes set on fire, and destruction of critical civilian supplies and infrastructure,“ Russell said.
“Families, including those who had previously been displaced by the conflict, have once again been forced to flee with little more than the clothes on their backs. There are deeply concerning reports of children being separated from their families or reportedly going missing.”
The UNICEF chief noted that the fighting and growing fear of ethnically motivated violence had driven many families to overcrowded displacement sites, where they lack adequate access to food, safe water and shelter, putting children at additional risk.
Russell said continued attacks, including the use of explosive weapons in residential areas, will only result in more children killed, injured and displaced.
Also Friday, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned that time is running out to prevent starvation in the Darfur region, as intensifying clashes in El Fasher are preventing aid deliveries to the wider Darfur region.
"The situation is dire," WFP Sudan spokesperson Leni Kinzli told reporters in a briefing from Nairobi, Kenya.
"People are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells, and if assistance doesn't reach them soon, we risk witnessing widespread starvation and death in Darfur and across other conflict areas in Sudan."
WFP estimates that more than 1.7 million people across Darfur are experiencing emergency levels of hunger and food insecurity, on the brink of famine.
The UN has been among the voices warning that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have encircled the capital of North Darfur and are poised to attack. Sudanese forces have positions inside the city, but are besieged by the RSF. So are some 1.5 million residents, including some 800,000 internally displaced persons.
Air strikes and shelling are exacerbating the hunger emergency in El Fasher. The United Nations estimates that 330,000 people in the town are facing crisis levels of food insecurity due to food shortages and soaring prices.
Inside North Darfur's Zamzam camp, one of the largest displacement camps in Sudan, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) said this week that the situation is catastrophic, especially for children. Of more than 46,000 children screened, the charity found 30 percent suffering from acute malnutrition and 8 percent suffering from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition.
The two border crossings used by humanitarians to reach Darfur from neighboring Chad have been closed. Aid convoys using the Tine crossing have been suspended because of the fighting in El Fasher, while the Sudanese government has stopped aid trucks from using the Adre crossing because it fears RSF will use the crossing to smuggle weapons into Darfur.
Kinzli said that before the recent fighting, WFP had planned several convoys from Chad with assistance for 700,000 people across Darfur. The delivery would have lasted many of them for two to three months, through the approaching rainy season, she said.
"Beyond that, we were hoping to scale up and ramp up even more, but now with these access constraints, with the security concerns as well as these bureaucratic restrictions, it makes it difficult for us at the moment," she said.
El Fasher is the only city in Darfur that the RSF has not captured. An impending battle could unleash atrocities similar to those of the genocide carried out by Arab Janjaweed fighters against African Zaghawa, Masalit, Fur and other non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur in the early 2000s. Janjaweed fighters make up today's RSF.
Analysts at the Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab are tracking the situation using satellites and other resources. They said in a report Thursday that 23 communities north and west of El Fasher have been intentionally burned to the ground in the past five weeks.
The fate of the residents is not known. The researchers say the location of the communities is consistent with satellite imagery they have analyzed showing that the RSF has advanced in those directions.
"We additionally have evidence they are also in the eastern side of El Fasher, and we are currently monitoring RSF forces moving from the south, from Nyala," Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the lab, told VOA.
Nyala is the capital of South Darfur state.
"At present we are seeing snapshots of their force strength," he said. "In certain cases, we have seen battalion- to regiment-size force massings. In some cases, including over a hundred vehicles."
The fact that the RSF has not yet attacked El Fasher demonstrates that international pressure can be an effective tool, Raymond said.
"RSF could have moved earlier; they have not yet," he said. "We have to use this moment to pull RSF forces back and to create a humanitarian envelope in which aid can be delivered — first in El Fasher and then into the interior of Darfur."
He said time is running out, as the rainy season is about to start.
Aid workers killed
On Friday, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, stressed that the killing of aid workers is unconscionable, following news that two International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) drivers were killed by gunmen in South Darfur, Sudan, on Thursday.
In a statement published Thursday, the ICRC said the team was returning from Layba to assess the humanitarian situation of communities affected by armed violence in the region when the incident occurred. Three other ICRC workers were injured.
In a social media post Friday, Griffiths described it as another dark day for the humanitarian community in Sudan. He underscored that humanitarian workers are not a target – and that those who risk everything to help others must be protected.
Displacement, hunger and lack of funds
Sudan is experiencing a humanitarian emergency of epic proportions that many have called the world's largest human-made crisis, with half the population in need of life-saving assistance, tens of thousands killed and injured, and millions uprooted from their homes.
Aid agencies say the war is having catastrophic consequences for a population of nearly 49 million people - more than 24.8 million are in need of life-saving humanitarian aid. Among those in need are more than 14 million children. In the Darfur region, more than 9 million people depend on humanitarian assistance.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warns (OCHA) that each day the conflict in Sudan continues, humanitarian needs increase. Emphasizing that the world cannot stand by and watch as civilians in Sudan continue to endure “utter devastation”, OCHA officials say people in the country have run out of time.
Since April last year, more than 8.9 million people have been displaced. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 20,000 people, half of them children, are forced to flee their homes every day in Sudan.
More than 6.9 million people have been internally displaced in Sudan – including over 200,000 refugees who have been displaced several times within the country since the start of the war. Overall, there are over 920,000 refugees in Sudan, mainly from South Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
More than 2 million people have fled the country. Of whom, 1.8 million people have crossed into Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Central African Republic.
In total, an estimated 12 million people are now displaced by conflict in Sudan, including more than 9.5 million within the country, making Sudan the largest internal displacement crisis in the world and one of the two largest displacement crises in the world, alongside the Syrian war.
Sudan could soon become the world's worst hunger crisis, with nearly 18 million people suffering from acute hunger, including 5 million on the brink of famine. Famine is expected to hit the country by 2024, particularly in the Darfur and Kordofan regions and in Khartoum and Al-Jazira states.
As the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate, the financial resources needed to meet the needs throughout Sudan and in neighboring countries are dangerously inadequate.
As of May 5, only 10 percent of the $2.6 billion needed under the Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) to provide life-saving assistance to more than 18 million people inside Sudan has been received, and only 8 percent of the $1.4 billion needed under the Regional Refugee Response Plan (RRP) for Sudan 2024 has been met.
Some information for this report provided by VOA.
Further information
Full text: Grave concern over civilians cut off from life-saving aid in Sudan, UNHCR, briefing notes, released May 3, 2024
https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing-notes/grave-concern-over-civilians-cut-life-saving-aid-sudan
Full text: An attack on El Fasher would endanger hundreds of thousands of children, warns UNICEF Statement by UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell on situation in Darfur, Sudan, released May 3, 2024
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/attack-el-fasher-would-endanger-hundreds-thousands-children-warns-unicef
Full text: WFP warns time is running out to prevent starvation in Darfur as violence in El Fasher escalates, WFP press release, published May 3, 2024
https://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-warns-time-running-out-prevent-starvation-darfur-violence-el-fasher-escalates
Full text: Soudan: alors que la violence s’intensifie au Darfour Nord, la crise nutritionnelle persiste dans le camp de Zamzam, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), press release, published May 2, 2024 (in French)
https://www.msf.fr/communiques-presse/soudan-alors-que-la-violence-s-intensifie-au-darfour-nord-la-crise-nutritionnelle-persiste-dans-le-camp-de-zamzam