As Sudan is about to enter its 10th month of conflict, United Nations agencies launched a $4.1 billion appeal Tuesday to provide urgent aid for 14.7 million people inside Sudan and 2.7 million people who have taken refuge in five neighboring countries.
The U.N. launch in Geneva got off to a poignant start with a video of Sudanese victims who recounted the terrible impact the war has had on their lives. Mena, a young Sudanese refugee in Egypt said the war has robbed her and other children of their education.
"How can we build our future in this situation? No school, which means no studying, no education, no medical service and most importantly," she said. "We lost our childhood. This is our future, and it must be preserved."
U.N. officials at the conference agreed that Sudan's conflict has fueled "suffering of epic proportions." And yet, said Martin Griffiths, U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, this crisis has been forgotten by the international community because of "competing crises in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere."
"But I do not think that there is anywhere quite so tragic in the world today as Sudan," he said. "The figures speak for themselves — 25 million people in Sudan who need assistance, half of them are children. That is an astonishing figure."
He said, "There is a certain kind of obscenity about the humanitarian world which is a competition of suffering," where different places in the world feel the need to magnify their level of suffering "to get more attention and get more money."
Fighting threatens food availability
The United Nations says the conflict has come at an intolerable high price for the Sudanese people. It reports more than 13,000 people have been killed and millions of people have been uprooted from their homes.
The World Food Program warns the expansion of fighting in Sudan, including to Al Jazirah, the country's so-called breadbasket, "poses a significant threat to national food availability." It says nearly 18 million people are facing acute hunger.
The World Health Organization reports diseases, including cholera, measles and malaria are spreading at a time when 70 to 80 percent of hospitals in conflict hot spots are not functioning.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told the conference that the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has created one of the world's largest displacement and protection crises.
"If you calculate people displaced inside and outside, you reach easily eight, nine million people displaced. This is massive. This is the scale of Ukraine, the scale of Syria. These are the three biggest displacement crises at the moment, and this is the one that is least talked about."
Grandi visited Sudan and Ethiopia last week. While in Port Sudan, he said he raised the issue of humanitarian access to people in need with both warring parties. He told them that the delivery of humanitarian assistance "needs to be facilitated, not made more difficult."
"I have received all the assurances," he said, adding that he had to explain to them that aid was being held up in a variety of ways: "We get slowed down by travel, by the need to get permits, by checkpoints and bureaucracy."
Grandi said he met with Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia and displaced people inside Sudan. All of them, he said, had the same message: "We want peace so we can go home, and we need support to rebuild our lives."
Grandi urged donor countries attending the conference "to step up their support for the people of Sudan. They desperately need help, and they need it now."
UN official spotlights deseparation
Griffiths warned countries that they are ignoring the conflict in Sudan and the desperation of its people at their peril.
"Sudan geographically poses a threat to destabilizing parts of Africa … It is something which we cannot allow to continue the way it is now," he said. "We have to invest in political diplomacy. We have to invest in humanitarian efforts. We have to invest in the region as well and we have to make sure that Sudan is a place that we think about every single day, to make sure that we do the best we can."
Griffiths said he looks forward to going to Sudan in a couple of weeks to bring attention to this crisis and to try to gain greater access for humanitarian aid to reach the millions in need.
He said he recently has been in touch with Sudan's rival generals — General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, who commands the Sudan Armed Forces and the RSF paramilitary leader, General Mohammed Hamdan, known as "Hemetti."
His aim, he said was to bring them together to the so-called humanitarian forum "so we would have negotiations for access."
"It is so clear. It is uncomplicated. It is so necessary, and I begged the two of them to come together," Griffiths said. "They both said they would. We are still waiting."
