Sudan crisis: Top ministers meet in New York in call for concerted action

The development comes almost 18 months since rival militaries started fighting each other in Sudan, forcing more than 10 million people from their homes – half of them children.

“People in Sudan have endured 17 months of hell, and the suffering continues to grow,” said the UN’s top relief official Joyce Msuya, Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. “Thousands of civilians have been killed, entire communities displaced and deprived of food, families scattered, children traumatized, women raped and abused. Decisive international action is urgent. We need humanitarian access to everyone in need, through all necessary routes, ramped-up funding for the response, ironclad commitments to protect civilians, and most of all, real and inclusive steps to end this ruinous war.”

Difficult diplomacy

Repeated warnings from UN humanitarians and appeals for an end to the hostilities from the Security Council have not halted the violence, although US-led peace talks in Switzerland in August with mediators from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates resulted in commitments to boost aid access from neighbouring Chad in the west and from Port Sudan in the east.

The emergency is now the world’s largest hunger crisis, according to UN humanitarians, who have warned that nearly 26 million people are already acutely hungry across Sudan.

US pledges $242 million in new assistance

Speaking at the high-level Ministerial side event in New York, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that many civilians “are in famine, some reduced to eating leaves and dirt to stave off hunger pains, but not starvation.”

“I feel, as I know all of you must, a sense of shame and embarrassment that this is happening on our watch. Of course, none of this just simply happened. This humanitarian catastrophe is a man made one brought on by a senseless war that has wrought unspeakable violence and by heartless blockades of food, water and medicine for those made victims of it, the rape and torture, ethnic cleansing, weaponization of hunger, it is utterly unconscionable.”

She said compassion fatigue must not win out: “In this moment, the international community needs to do everything in our power, in our power to silence the guns and massively scale up aid.”

OCHA‘s Ms. Msuya told the event that despite the “courageous efforts of local and international humanitarian organizations, we simply cannot deliver adequate levels of assistance. Let us not be here again in one year’s time, lamenting another 12 months of death, destruction and unbearable suffering. Today, let us commit to taking urgent concrete steps to protect and support civilians in Sudan.”

Death toll warning

“Without urgent assistance, hundreds of thousands could die,” the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said, at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.

The UN aid coordination office, OCHA, and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, noted that famine has been confirmed in North Darfur’s Zamzam camp, but “many other areas” are at risk. A staggering near five million children and pregnant and breastfeeding women are acutely malnourished, latest assessments show.

Sickness stalks weakest

Disease is also spreading rapidly among malnourished communities whose immune systems have been laid low. “Health care and basic services have been decimated, cholera and other diseases are on the rise, and children are out of school for a second straight year,” the UN agencies said in a statement. “The emergency is one of the worst protection crises in recent history, with alarming levels of sexual and gender-based violence continuing to terrorize civilians, particularly women and girls.”

In addition to the threat posed by ongoing heavy fighting, humanitarians have struggled to ramp up lifesaving relief deliveries because of restricted aid access and chronic underfunding. Of the $2.7 billion required to help 14.7 million people inside Sudan until the end of this year, funding is currently at just 49 per cent. The $1.5 billion appeal to help 3.3 million refugees from Sudan in seven neighbouring countries is only 25 per cent funded.

Refugee agency appeal

“This brutal war has uprooted millions of people, forcing them to leave their homes, schools and jobs behind in search of safety,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi. “Countries neighbouring Sudan are generously hosting a rising number of refugees, but cannot shoulder that responsibility alone. People need humanitarian aid now and support to rebuild their lives. Meaningful peace efforts are also urgently needed so people can eventually return home. The stability of the whole region hangs in the balance.”

These and other challenges will be discussed at ministerial level at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, co-hosted by OCHA, UNHCR, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the US, the African Union and the European Union. All have underscored their support for the people of Sudan and a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

“For over 500 days, the Sudanese people have been bearing the brunt of this war, feeling forgotten and abandoned by the world,” said WFP spokesperson Leni Kinzli. “They are still holding on to the hope that one day they can return to their lives together. We owe it to the Sudanese people to step up collective action and prevent mass-scale starvation.”