On April 15 of last year, Sudan plunged into a devastating war that has left behind almost 15,000 dead, 8 million civilians displaced, 25 million people in urgent need of help. Suffering is also growing and is likely to get worse, warns Justin Brady, head of the Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Office (OCHA) in Sudan.
«Without more resources, not only will we not be able to stop faminebut we won’t be able to help basically anyone,” he says.
“Most of the rations people receive from organizations like the World Food Program (WFP) are already halved, so we can’t take away more to try to make this operation work,” he explains.
Grim conditions on the ground reached emergency level shortly after the rival Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces launched air and ground strikes in mid-April 2023, it says, as a tsunami of violence spirals today throughout the country, from the capital Khartoum.
The bottom has not yet been reached
“Our greatest concerns are focused on the conflict zones of Khartoum and the states of Darfur,” he explains from Port Sudan, where humanitarian efforts continue to deliver vital aid to those most in need.
The entire humanitarian community was forced to leave the capital a few weeks after the fighting began due to the serious security situation.
Although a recent famine alert shows that nearly 18 million Sudanese face acute famine, the $2.7 billion response plan for 2024 is only 6% funded, Brady says.
“The situation is very bad, but I don’t think we have hit rock bottom.”
Conditions were bad even before the war, since the 2021 coup, with an economy drowning amid alarming waves of ethnic violence.
Although humanitarian supplies are available in Port Sudan, the key challenge is to guarantee safe access to affected populationscurrently hampered by looted aid warehouses and crippling bureaucratic impediments, insecurity and total communications blackouts.
“Sudan is often talked about as a forgotten crisis,” he says, “but I wonder how many knew about her to be able to forget her«.
War and children
As famine spreads across the country, a child dies every two hours from malnutrition in the Zamzam displaced persons camp in North Darfur.
In fact, 24 million children have been exposed to the conflict and a staggering 730,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, according to Jill Lawler, Head of Sudan Operations at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
«Children should not have to live this experiencehearing bombs go off or being displaced several times” in a “conflict that has to end,” he says, describing the first UN aid mission to Omdurman, Sudan’s second largest city.
More than 19 million children have been left out of school, and many young people can also be seen carrying weapons, reflecting reports that children continue to face forced recruitment by armed groups.
Too weak to breastfeed
Meanwhile, women and girls who were raped in the first months of the war are now giving birth, says the head of UNICEF operations. Some are too weak to breastfeed their children.
“One mother in particular was caring for her three-month-old son, and unfortunately she did not have the resources to provide him with milk, so she had turned to goat’s milk, which caused a case of diarrhea,” explains Lawler.
The baby was one of the “lucky few” who were able to receive treatment, as millions of people lack access to healthcare.
Death, destruction and targeted assassinations
On the ground, Sudanese who had fled to other countries, internally displaced people and some people who are recording the continued suffering of the Sudanese share their views.
«I have lost everything I had«says Fátima, former UN employee. “The militias looted our house and took everything, even the doors.”
For 57 days, she and her family were trapped in their home in El Geneina, West Darfur, while militias systematically attacked and killed people based on their ethnicity, she explains. “There were so many bodies in the streets that it was difficult to walk,” she says, describing her escape.
No signs of solution in sight
The photographer Ala Kheir has been covering the war since violent clashes broke out in Khartoum a year ago, and says the “scale of the disaster” must be greater than what the media shows.
«This war is very strange because Both sides hate people and hate journalists.«he maintains, underlining that civilians are bearing the brunt of the continuous and deadly clashes.
“A year later, the war in Sudan is still going strong and the lives of millions of Sudanese have come to a complete standstill and halt, with no sign of a solution in sight.”
Get out of the margins
Although the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire during the holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week, fighting continues, notes OCHA’s Brady.
«We need the international community to stop standing on the sidelines and involve both sides to come to the table, because this conflict is a nightmare for the Sudanese people,” he says, explaining that a famine prevention plan is being drawn up ahead of a pledging conference for much-needed funds. , which will be held in Paris on Monday, the day the war will enter its second year.
Echoing the call of many aid agencies, for Sudanese caught in the crossfire, the nightmare must end now.
