Senior UN Officials: Fighting has Plunged Sudan into Humanitarian Catastrophe

FILE - People board a truck as they leave Khartoum, Sudan, on June 19, 2023. (AP Photo, File)

The conflict in Sudan has left 24 million people — half the country’s population — in need of food and other assistance, but only 2.5 million have received aid because of vicious fighting and a lack of funding, two senior UN officials said Friday.

Eden Worsornu, director of operations for the UN humanitarian agency, and Ted Chaiban, deputy executive director of the UN children’s agency UNICEF, who just returned from Sudan, painted a dire picture of devastation and upheaval in Sudan, with no peace talks in sight, The Associated Press reported.

Worsornu said hotspots, such as the capital of Khartoum and the southern Kordofan and western Darfur regions, "have been shattered by relentless violence.” Nearly 4 million people have fled the fighting, facing scorching heat up to 48 degrees Celsius, and threats of attacks, sexual violence and death, she said.

The now nearly four-month conflict has killed more than 3,000 people and wounded over 6,000 others, according to the last government figures, released in June. But the true tally is likely much higher, doctors and activists say.

“Before the war erupted on the 15th of April, Sudan was already grappling with a humanitarian crisis,” Chaiban said. “Now, more than 110 days of brutal fighting have turned the crisis into a catastrophe, threatening the lives and futures of a generation of children and young people who make up over 70% of the population.”

The fighting pits forces loyal to top army Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan against his rival, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who commands the Rapid Support Forces.

Worsornu and Chaiban, who previously worked in Sudan, said ethnic violence has returned to Darfur, where attacks two decades ago by the notorious Janjaweed Arab militias on people of Central or East African ethnicities became synonymous with genocide and war crimes.

Now “it is worse than it was in 2004," Worsornu said.

The statistics are grim: 24 million people need food and other humanitarian aid, including 14 million children, a number equivalent to every single child in Colombia, France, Germany and Thailand, Chaiban said.

The UN has been trying to get aid to 18 million Sudanese, but 93 of its humanitarian partners were able to reach only 2.5 million between April and June because of the severe fighting and difficulties getting to those in need.