As Sudan has entered its tenth month of conflict, United Nations agencies launched a US$4.1 billion appeal Wednesday to provide urgent aid for 14.7 million people inside Sudan and 2.7 million refugees and host communities in five neighboring countries. Due to the war, half of Sudan’s population – some 25 million people – needs humanitarian assistance and protection. More than 1.6 million people have fled across Sudan’s borders to the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan.
© UNOCHA/Ala Kheir
The UN on Wednesday urged countries not to forget millions of people caught up in the conflict in Sudan as it called for $4.1 billion to help stave off famine fears and assist those who fled abroad to bordering States.
The launch of the Sudan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) and the Regional Refugee Response Plan (RRP) in Geneva got off to a poignant start with a video of Sudanese victims who recounted the terrible impact the war has had on their lives. Mena, a young Sudanese refugee in Egypt, said the war has robbed her and other children of their education.
"How can we build our future in this situation? No school, which means no studying, no education, no medical service and most importantly," she said. "We lost our childhood. This is our future, and it must be preserved."
UN officials agreed that Sudan's conflict has fueled "suffering of epic proportions." And yet, said Martin Griffiths, UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, this crisis has been forgotten by the international community because of "competing crises in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere."
"But I do not think that there is anywhere quite so tragic in the world today as Sudan," he said. "The figures speak for themselves - 25 million people in Sudan who need assistance, half of them are children. That is an astonishing figure."
"There is a certain kind of obscenity about the humanitarian world which is a competition of suffering," where different places in the world feel the need to magnify their level of suffering "to get more attention and get more money," he said.
The spread of the conflict between Sudan’s armed forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to areas such as Al-Jazirah state, the country’s breadbasket, has prompted warnings of famine.
“If we start seeing famine in Sudan to add to the violence, displacement and lack of a political horizon, then I think we can all agree we have no humanity in us that would allow this to happen,” Griffiths said.
The World Food Programme (WFP) warns the expansion of fighting in Sudan, including to Al-Jazirah, "poses a significant threat to national food availability." The UN agency says nearly 18 million people are facing acute hunger.
Two in three people in Sudan lack access to healthcare, and approximately 19 million children are out of school. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports diseases, including cholera, measles and malaria, are spreading at a time when 70 to 80 percent of hospitals in conflict hot spots are not functioning.
To provide humanitarian assistance inside Sudan, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) needs $2.7 billion to help 14.7 million people. For all those who’ve fled the country, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) requested an additional $1.4 billion to support people displaced in five countries bordering Sudan.
The conflict is estimated to have killed more than 13,000 people and over 8 million people have been uprooted from their homes. Sudan’s rival militias shared power after longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir was toppled in a popular uprising in 2019.
Conflict erupted last April after a power struggle developed between the two military factions amid a faltering transition towards elections and civilian-led government. The fighting has continued to escalate despite international efforts to reach a ceasefire.
The RSF has specifically been accused of mass killings and use of rape as a weapon of war, especially in the Darfur region. Both parties to the conflict have been accused of war crimes.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said that the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has created one of the world's largest displacement and protection crises.
"If you calculate people displaced inside and outside, you reach easily eight, nine million people displaced. This is massive. This is the scale of Ukraine, the scale of Syria. These are the three biggest displacement crises at the moment, and this is the one that is least talked about."
More than nine months after the war erupted between the SAF and the RSF in the capital Khartoum, about 8 million people have been forced to flee their homes, taking refuge inside and outside Sudan. More than 6.3 million of those displaced are within Sudan, while more than 1.6 million others have fled across borders into neighboring South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Egypt, the Central African Republic and Libya.
In total, some 10.7 million people are now displaced by conflicts in Sudan, with 9 million within the country, making Sudan the largest internal displacement crisis in the world. OCHA reports that Chad hosts the majority of new arrivals at 37 percent, with South Sudan at 30 percent, Egypt at 24 percent, while Ethiopia, Libya and the Central African Republic host the remaining.
Grandi visited Sudan and Ethiopia last week. While in Port Sudan, he said he raised the issue of humanitarian access to people in need with both warring parties. He told them that the delivery of humanitarian assistance "needs to be facilitated, not made more difficult."
"I have received all the assurances," he said, adding that he had to explain to them that aid was being held up in a variety of ways: "We get slowed down by travel, by the need to get permits, by checkpoints and bureaucracy."
Grandi said he met with Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia and displaced people inside Sudan. All of them, he said, had the same message: "We want peace so we can go home, and we need support to rebuild our lives."
Grandi urged donor countries attending the pledging event "to step up their support for the people of Sudan. They desperately need help, and they need it now."
The UNHCR chief also warned of the regional implications of ignoring the crisis, as people who have already fled Sudan now aim for Libya, Tunisia and then Europe.
“I have warned literally European countries that if the current neglect of this crisis continues, we will see secondary movements,” Grandi added.
Griffiths warned countries that they are ignoring the conflict in Sudan and the desperation of its people at their peril.
"Sudan geographically poses a threat to destabilizing parts of Africa … It is something which we cannot allow to continue the way it is now," he said.
"We have to invest in political diplomacy. We have to invest in humanitarian efforts. We have to invest in the region as well and we have to make sure that Sudan is a place that we think about every single day, to make sure that we do the best we can."
The Emergency Relief Coordinator said he looks forward to going to Sudan in a couple of weeks to bring attention to this crisis and to try to gain greater access for humanitarian aid to reach the millions in need.
He said he recently has been in touch with Sudan's rival generals — General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, who commands the Sudan Armed Forces and the RSF paramilitary leader, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
His aim, he said, was to bring them together to the so-called humanitarian forum "so we would have negotiations for access."
"It is so clear. It is uncomplicated. It is so necessary, and I begged the two of them to come together," Griffiths said.
"They both said they would. We are still waiting."
Some information for this report provided by VOA.
Further information
Full text: Sudan: Summary of the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan and the Regional Refugee Response Plan (February 2024), UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, released February 7, 2024
https://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/sudan-summary-humanitarian-needs-and-response-plan-and-regional-refugee-response-plan-february-2024