The Sudanese people \u201care trapped in an inferno of brutal violence\u201d with famine, disease and fighting closing in and no end in sight, the top UN humanitarian official in the war-ravaged country said on Wednesday. Clementine Nkweta-Salami told a UN press conference that \u201chorrific atrocities are being committed with reckless abandon, reports of rape, torture and ethnically motivated violence are streaming in,\u201d communities and families have been torn apart, and almost 9 million people have been forced to flee their homes in what is now the world\u2019s largest displacement crisis.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the UN food agency warned Sudan\u2019s warring parties that there is a serious risk of widespread starvation and death in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan if they don\u2019t allow humanitarian aid into the vast western region \u2013 a view echoed Wednesday by Nkweta-Salami. Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, broke out into street battles in the capital, Khartoum.<\/p>\n
Fighting has spread to other parts of the country, especially urban areas and the vast western Darfur region, and the UN says over 14,000 people have been killed and 33,000 injured. The paramilitary forces, known as the RSF, have gained control of most of Darfur and are besieging the key city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur and the only capital they don\u2019t hold. Nkweta-Salami told a UN news conference that hostilities in El Fasher have been escalating and clashes over the weekend and early this week caused dozens of casualties and displaced many more of the 800,000 people still in the city.<\/p>\n
She said there are just six weeks before \u201cthe lean season\u201d begins, when food becomes less available and more expensive. It also coincides with the rainy season when reaching people is very difficult because water-logged roads become impassable, and the end of the planting season when the UN needs to provide seeds to farmers, she said. The UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan urged \u201cmore funding and fast.\u201d On April 15, donors pledged USD 2.1 billion in humanitarian aid for Sudan, but Nkweta-Salami said the UN\u2019s USD 2.7 billion humanitarian appeal \u2014 to help nearly 15 million of the country\u2019s 58 million people \u2014 is just 12 per cent funded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout more resources, we won\u2019t be able to scale up in time to stave off famine and further deprivation,\u201d she warned. Leni Kinzli, the UN World Food Programme\u2019s regional spokesperson, said on May 3 that at least 1.7 million people in Darfur were experiencing emergency levels of hunger in Sudan in December, and the number is expected to be \u201cmuch higher\u201d now. \u201cPeople are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells,\u201d Kinzli said. \u201cAnd if assistance doesn\u2019t reach them soon, we risk witnessing widespread starvation and death in Darfur and across other conflict-affected areas in Sudan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nkweta-Salami demanded unfettered access to the millions in need, urging more aid deliveries from Chad which borders Darfur, and across conflict lines. She said food, water and medicine are desperately needed in El Fasher, which is now completely surrounded. As an example of the difficulties the UN and other aid agencies face, she said a UN convoy with more than a dozen trucks carrying critical supplies for 120,000 people left Port Sudan on April 3 but still hasn\u2019t reached El Fasher because of insecurity, checkpoints and delays in getting clearances.<\/p>\n
Nkweta-Salami urged the parties engaged in fighting in and around El Fasher to step back to prevent what would be \u201ca catastrophic impact on the civilian population.\u201d \u201cAnd most of all, we need more engagement to end this war\u201d and to hold the parties to the conflict accountable, she said. \u201cThe international community cannot stand by as this crisis spirals out of control \u2013 as the noose of this conflict tightens its stranglehold on the civilian population.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Sudanese people \u201care trapped in an inferno of brutal violence\u201d with famine, disease and fighting closing in and no\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":44435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[1450,7270,1677,493,320,2941,11872,10687,475,13019,12894,14054],"class_list":["post-44434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-civilians","tag-darfur","tag-genocide","tag-humanitarian-crisis","tag-refugees","tag-rsf","tag-security-issues","tag-starvation","tag-sudan","tag-sudanese-civil-war","tag-sudanese-military","tag-un-world-food-programme-wfp"],"reading_time":"4 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}