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UNICEF Spokesman in Sudan: Poor Humanitarian Conditions Threaten Lives of Millions of Children

Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese children have become displaced (UNICEF)
Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese children have become displaced (UNICEF)
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UNICEF Spokesman in Sudan: Poor Humanitarian Conditions Threaten Lives of Millions of Children

Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese children have become displaced (UNICEF)
Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese children have become displaced (UNICEF)

The spokesman for the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in Sudan, Othman Shaibah, pointed to obstacles in the delivery of humanitarian aid to Darfur, Khartoum and Kordofan.
Shaibeh stressed that UNICEF urgently needs $240 million to prevent famine in the next six months and reach 3.5 million children under the age of five, who reside in the country’s most vulnerable areas.
In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Shaibah said that bureaucratic obstacles, interruptions in telecommunications, looting, in addition to the lack of safe and sustainable movement of humanitarian supplies across front lines and borders, all severely hinder children’s access to life-saving humanitarian services.
He emphasized the importance of simplifying administrative requirements, including inspections and clearance processes, to facilitate cross-line operations and the arrival of humanitarian aid through all crossing points, especially from Chad and South Sudan, in line with the international commitments and pledges made in Jeddah.
“The continuous interruption of communications hinders the ability of humanitarian agencies to respond on a large scale, and restricts families’ access to basic services,” he stated, adding: “An almost complete disruption of communications in Sudan, after the closure of the entire network and the Internet in early February, prevented millions of citizens from communicating with their families, receiving remittances from abroad, and obtaining life-saving aid.”
Shaibah also pointed to the need for additional resources to address the regional impact of the crisis, saying: “If aid is not available, the pressure on already scarce resources in host countries may create tensions between local communities and exacerbate the effects of the conflict beyond Sudan’s borders.”
He revealed that the IPC projections for food security in December 2023 indicated that 17.7 million people faced the third stage of acute food insecurity or higher “crises, emergencies, disasters and famine” in the period between October 2023 and February 2024.
“About 3.6 million children currently suffer from acute malnutrition, and this includes more than 730,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, which is the most life-threatening form of malnutrition and requires urgent medical intervention,” the UNICEF spokesman remarked.
He explained that the organization “has taken all possible measures to ensure that children suffering from acute malnutrition throughout Sudan, and in conflict areas, have access to life-saving therapeutic nutrition supplies.”
Shaibah talked about challenges facing the distribution of vaccines and basic health care in Sudan, saying: “Restrictions on access and lack of security are among the main obstacles hindering the movement of vaccines, in addition to the health system which is on the verge of collapse, and front-line workers not receiving their salaries.”
He continued: “For months, supplies have been exhausted and the infrastructure represented by hospitals and health system workers continues to be under constant attack, including cold chains.”
The UNICEF spokesman warned of the spread of epidemic diseases among children, saying that since the beginning of the war, the organization has distributed emergency health supplies to 7.3 million people, and was able to reach 202,000 vulnerable mothers and children in conflict areas and provide them with emergency aid.

 

 

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50 Years after Lebanon's Civil War Began, a Bullet-riddled Bus Stands as a Reminder

FILE - A militiaman aims his rifle down an alley at Christian forces on the other side of the Green Line, in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 4, 1982. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - A militiaman aims his rifle down an alley at Christian forces on the other side of the Green Line, in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 4, 1982. (AP Photo, File)
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50 Years after Lebanon's Civil War Began, a Bullet-riddled Bus Stands as a Reminder

FILE - A militiaman aims his rifle down an alley at Christian forces on the other side of the Green Line, in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 4, 1982. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - A militiaman aims his rifle down an alley at Christian forces on the other side of the Green Line, in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 4, 1982. (AP Photo, File)

It was an ordinary day in Beirut. In one part of Lebanon's capital, a church was inaugurated, with the leader of the Christian Kataeb party there. In another, Palestinian factions held a military parade. Kataeb and Palestinians had clashed, again, that morning.

What happened next on April 13, 1975, would change the course of Lebanon, plunging it into 15 years of civil war that would kill about 150,000 people, leave 17,000 missing and lead to foreign intervention. Beirut became synonymous with snipers, kidnappings and car bombs.

Lebanon has never fully grappled with the war's legacy, and in many ways it has never fully recovered, 50 years later. The government on Sunday marked the anniversary with a small ceremony and minute of silence, a rare official acknowledgement of the legacy of the conflict.

The massacre Unrest had been brewing. Palestinian militants had begun launching attacks against Israel from Lebanese territory. Leftist groups and many Muslims in Lebanon sympathized with the Palestinian cause. Christians and some other groups saw the Palestinian militants as a threat.

At the time, Mohammad Othman was 16, a Palestinian refugee in the Tel al-Zaatar camp east of Beirut.

Three buses had left camp that morning, carrying students like him as well as militants from a coalition of hardline factions that had broken away from the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They passed through the Ein Rummaneh neighborhood without incident and joined the military parade.

The buses were supposed to return together, but some participants were tired after marching and wanted to go back early. They hired a small bus from the street, Othman said. Thirty-three people packed in.

They were unaware that earlier that day, small clashes had broken out between Palestinians and Kataeb Party members guarding the church in Ein Rummaneh. A bodyguard for party leader Pierre Gemayel had been killed.

Suddenly the road was blocked, and gunmen began shooting at the bus “from all sides,” Othman recalled.

Some passengers had guns they had carried in the parade, Othman said, but they were unable to draw them quickly in the crowded bus.

A camp neighbor fell dead on top of him. The man’s 9-year-old son was also killed. Othman was shot in the shoulder.

“The shooting didn’t stop for about 45 minutes until they thought everyone was dead,” he said. Othman said paramedics who eventually arrived had a confrontation with armed men who tried to stop them from evacuating him, The Associated Press said.

Twenty-two people were killed.

Conflicting narratives

Some Lebanese say the men who attacked the bus were responding to an assassination attempt against Gemayel by Palestinian militants. Others say the Kataeb had set up an ambush intended to spark a wider conflict.

Marwan Chahine, a Lebanese-French journalist who wrote a book about the events of April 13, 1975, said he believes both narratives are wrong.

Chahine said he found no evidence of an attempt to kill Gemayel, who had left the church by the time his bodyguard was shot. And he said the attack on the bus appeared to be more a matter of trigger-happy young men at a checkpoint than a “planned operation.”

There had been past confrontations, "but I think this one took this proportion because it arrived after many others and at a point when the authority of the state was very weak,” Chahine said.

The Lebanese army had largely ceded control to militias, and it did not respond to the events in Ein Rummaneh that day. The armed Palestinian factions had been increasingly prominent in Lebanon after the PLO was driven out of Jordan in 1970, and Lebanese Christians had also increasingly armed themselves.

“The Kataeb would say that the Palestinians were a state within a state,” Chahine said. “But the reality was, you had two states in a state. Nobody was following any rules."

Selim Sayegh, a member of parliament with the Kataeb Party who was 14 and living in Ein Rummaneh when the fighting started, said he believes war had been inevitable since the Lebanese army backed down from an attempt to take control of Palestinian camps two years earlier.

Sayegh said men at the checkpoint that day saw a bus full of Palestinians with “weapons apparent” and "thought that is the second wave of the operation” that started with the killing of Gemayel's bodyguard.

The war unfolded quickly from there. Alliances shifted. New factions formed. Israel and Syria occupied parts of the country. The United States intervened, and the US embassy and Marine barracks were targeted by bombings. Beirut was divided between Christian and Muslim sectors.

In response to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, a Shiite militant group was formed in the early 1980s with Iranian backing: Hezbollah. It would grow to be arguably the most powerful armed non-state group in the region.

Hezbollah was the only militant group allowed to keep its weapons after Lebanon's civil war, given special status as a “resistance force” because Israel was still in southern Lebanon. After the group was badly weakened last year in a war with Israel that ended with a ceasefire, there has been increasing pressure for it to disarm.

The survivors

Othman said he became a fighter after the war started because “there were no longer schools or anything else to do.” Later he would disarm and became a pharmacist.

He remembers being bewildered when a peace accord in 1989 ushered in the end of civil war: “All this war and bombing, and in the end they make some deals and it’s all over.”

Of the 10 others who survived the bus attack, he said, three were killed a year later when Christian militias attacked the Tel al-Zaatar camp. Another was killed in a 1981 bombing at the Iraqi embassy. A couple died of natural causes, one lives in Germany, and he has lost track of the others.

The bus has also survived, as a reminder.

Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the attack, it was towed from storage on a farm to the private Nabu Museum in Heri, north of Beirut. Visitors took photos with it and peered into bullet holes in its rusted sides.

Ghida Margie Fakih, a museum spokesperson, said the bus will remain on display indefinitely as a “wake-up call” to remind Lebanese not to go down the path of conflict again.

The bus “changed the whole history in Lebanon and took us somewhere that nobody wanted to go,” she said.