UN Relief Coordinator Calls for Immediate Action to Stop War in Sudan

People displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan between the army and paramilitaries, queue to receive aid from a charity organisation in Gedaref on December 30, 2023. (Photo by AFP)
People displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan between the army and paramilitaries, queue to receive aid from a charity organisation in Gedaref on December 30, 2023. (Photo by AFP)
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UN Relief Coordinator Calls for Immediate Action to Stop War in Sudan

People displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan between the army and paramilitaries, queue to receive aid from a charity organisation in Gedaref on December 30, 2023. (Photo by AFP)
People displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan between the army and paramilitaries, queue to receive aid from a charity organisation in Gedaref on December 30, 2023. (Photo by AFP)

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths has called on the international community, especially those whom he said have “influence” on the parties to the conflict in Sudan, to take “decisive and immediate” action to stop the fighting and safeguard humanitarian operations.

Last April, clashes erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by Abdulfattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces headed by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo following weeks of tension.

Griffiths said in a statement published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Action (OCHA) that nearly nine months of war have tipped Sudan into a downward spiral that only grows more ruinous by the day.

He noted that as the “conflict spreads, human suffering is deepening, humanitarian access is shrinking, and hope is dwindling.”

Nearly 25 million people across Sudan will need humanitarian assistance in 2024, “the bleak reality is that intensifying hostilities are putting most of them beyond our reach,” he said Thursday.

- Serious threat

He said that hostilities reached the “country’s breadbasket” in al-Jazirah State, putting more of the population “at stake.”

More than 500,000 people have fled fighting in and around the state capital, Wad Medani, long a place of refuge for those uprooted by clashes elsewhere.

Ongoing mass displacement could also fuel the rapid spread of a cholera outbreak in the state, with more than 1,800 suspected cases reported there so far.

“The same horrific abuses that have defined this war in other hotspots – Khartoum, Darfur, and Kordofan – are now being reported in Wad Medani.”

Accounts of widespread human rights violations, including sexual violence, “remind us that the parties to this conflict are still failing to uphold their commitments to protect civilians.”

Given Wad Medani’s significance as a hub for relief operations, the fighting there – and looting of humanitarian warehouses and supplies – “is a body blow to our efforts to deliver food, water, health care, and other critical aid,” Griffiths pointed out.

- Regional stability

Top UN officials reported that about 25 million persons across Sudan will need humanitarian aid in 2024. However, the intensified hostilities make it more difficult for them to reach the aid.

Deliveries across conflict lines have ground to a halt. The cross-border aid operation from Chad continues to serve as a lifeline for people in Darfur, and efforts to deliver elsewhere are increasingly under threat.

Griffiths also warned that the escalating violence in Sudan is also imperiling regional stability.

The war has unleashed the world’s largest displacement crisis, uprooting the lives of more than 7 million people, some 1.4 million of whom have crossed into neighboring countries that already host large refugee populations.



Over 100 Patients to Be Evacuated from Gaza, WHO Says

 A youth salvages items from the rubble of a building destroyed in Israeli strikes in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 5, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A youth salvages items from the rubble of a building destroyed in Israeli strikes in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 5, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
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Over 100 Patients to Be Evacuated from Gaza, WHO Says

 A youth salvages items from the rubble of a building destroyed in Israeli strikes in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 5, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A youth salvages items from the rubble of a building destroyed in Israeli strikes in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 5, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)

More than 100 patients including children will be transferred out of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday in a rare medical evacuation from the Palestinian enclave during the Israel-Hamas war, a World Health Organization official said on Tuesday.

The WHO says fewer than 300 patients have been evacuated from Gaza since early May, when Israel expanded its military offensive southwards and took over the southern Rafah Crossing with Egypt, which had been used for medical transfers.

Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said the patients, including children with trauma injuries and chronic diseases, would depart in a large convoy via the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel.

Under arrangements made by the WHO, the patients will then fly to the United Arab Emirates from Ramon Airport in southern Israel, and some will travel on to Romania, he said.

"These are ad hoc measures. What we have requested repeatedly is a sustained medevac (medical evacuation) outside of Gaza," Peeperkorn told a press conference.

Asked whether Israel had approved the transfer, he said he was hopeful it would be facilitated by Israeli authorities.

He said more than 12,000 people were awaiting transfer, adding: "We cannot continue the way we do now."

COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for Palestinian affairs, says it actively facilitates the departure of seriously ill or injured patients, adding that the scope of such evacuations was determined by the capacity of organizations and countries to receive them.

As of last week, it said 10 groups of patients had been evacuated through Israel and it was willing to coordinate more.

Peeperkorn was part of a WHO convoy that on Nov. 3 provided some relief for the busy al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals in northern Gaza which he said were barely operational because of medical and staff shortages.

"For al-Awda we are very concerned because the hospital needs urgent fuel and medical supplies, otherwise it might become non-functional over the coming week," he said of the hospital in Jabalia, just north of Gaza City.

Israel accuses Hamas fighters of hiding among civilians, including in hospitals, in the war that began after the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023.

In a night-time raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital last month, an Israeli military official said around 100 Hamas fighters were captured, some posing as medical staff, along with weapons. Hamas rejected the accusations.