UNOCHA slams international community for sleeping on Sudan's war
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UNOCHA's director of operations labeled the war in Sudan as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory.
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The belongings of people who crossed the border from Sudan sit in a yard at the Joda border crossing in South Sudan on Tuesday, May 16, 2023. (AP)
The Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) condemned the international community's lack of action on the war in Sudan, warning that it is facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory.
The director of operations at UNOCHA , Edem Wosornu, emphasized, "By all measures -- the sheer scale of humanitarian needs, the numbers of people displaced and facing hunger -- Sudan is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory."
Speaking with the Security Council on behalf of UNOCHA head Martin Griffins, she added, "A humanitarian travesty is playing out in Sudan under a veil of international inattention and inaction."
"Simply put, we are failing the people of Sudan," Wosornu said, conveying the population's "desperation".
The top US diplomat dealing with refugees, Julieta Valls Noyes, announced yesterday in Chad as she met Prime Minister Succès Masra that the US is donating another $47 million in humanitarian assistance to Sudan, adding that aid is directed at neighboring countries hosting Sudanese refugees, including Chad and South Sudan.
More than 18 million Sudanese are struggling with acute food insecurity, a record during harvest season, and 10 million more than at this time last year, while 730,000 Sudanese children are predicted to be suffering from severe malnutrition.
Sudan at risk of becoming 'largest hunger crisis' amid war: WFP
A warning by the United Nations' World Food Programme on March 6 declared that Sudan's almost year-long war "risks triggering the world's largest hunger crisis."
The war between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the Rapid Support Forces, has left tens of thousands dead, and more than eight million displaced from their homes, which has made it the world's largest displacement crisis.
WFP executive director Cindy McCain said that "millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake," adding, "Twenty years ago, Darfur was the world's largest hunger crisis and the world rallied to respond."
"But today, the people of Sudan have been forgotten," she added.
WFP highlighted that it cannot reach 90% of those facing "emergency levels of hunger," noting that only 5% of the population "can afford a square meal a day."
It mentioned that in South Sudan, where 600,000 people from Sudan have fled, "families arrive hungry and are met with more hunger," and one in five children are malnourished.
