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The Urgent Need for Peace in Sudan
"Unless there is a lasting ceasefire and peace talks, this conflict threatens not only to destroy Sudan as a functioning state, but it also threatens to destabilize the entire region."
Sep 14, 2024
Last month, the International Rescue Committee, described the crisis in Sudan as the top global humanitarian emergency. On August 28, Lawrence O’Donnell described the war in Sudan as the “least reported humanitarian crisis on the planet”.
Levon Sevunts is a former journalist who works for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. He had recently returned from Chad, a country hosting 633,867 people who have fled Sudan. Sevunts spoke to me, about his trip:
“For me, this was an absolutely surreal experience to be back in Chad almost 20 years to the day after I went to Chad as a Canadian journalist, covering the conflict in Darfur, seeing the same stories, the same refugees, only on a much bigger scale."
Sevunts said,
“The stories I heard from speaking to Sudanese women refugees, who had seen members of their families executed in front of their eyes, of women who told me about worrying about how they’re going to feed their kids, worried every time they went fetching wood beyond the security of the camp that they would get raped or assaulted—worried, but they had to do this anyway because they needed to feed their families.”
Sevunts recalled,
“I was with a journalist in this border town called Adré, a town on the Chadian side of the Sudan border, but it’s right on the border. This is the place where most of the refugees come fleeing from violence. I was speaking with my colleagues about the kind of cases they were seeing, and they were saying there is a big difference now, because in the initial months when the conflict started in mid-April, especially around June when the violence spread in Darfur, they were seeing a lot of people coming in with injuries and gunshot wounds, shrapnel.”
He told me that
“What you are seeing now is that a lot of people are coming in extremely malnourished. This is basically a man-made food crisis. Because of the war, farmers are not able to plant in their fields; they have missed one planting season already, their crops were burned, and their livestock was destroyed or taken away from them. So you have this incredible humanitarian situation inside Sudan, but it’s also playing out on the Chadian side of the border because before the war, this part of Chad used to get most of its food imports from Sudan, and now it’s vice versa. So now they have to truck food all the way from Libya because the area doesn’t provide enough food for the population. Food is trucked all the way through the Sahara desert, all the way from Libya, south to Chad, and from Chad, some of it goes to Sudan. And this means that prices have jumped. So not only do humanitarian agencies have to buy items from local markets, but the prices of things at the market have gone up because of the logistical difficulties that the war has created."
Sevunts explained that it’s not just the refugees; it’s the local population who are worried about putting food on the table for their own families.
Sevunts noted that many displaced people, “have been displaced time and again. They flee to one city or region that they think is safe, and then a couple of months later, war spreads to that region, and they have to flee again and again.” He called on the international community to step steps in with immediate humanitarian assistance.
He also noted that, “humanitarian aid is just a band-aid solution” and said that, “what they really need is peace in Sudan. Because unless there is a lasting ceasefire and peace talks, this conflict threatens not only to destroy Sudan as a functioning state, but it also threatens to destabilize the entire region, a very, very fragile part of East and Central Africa.”
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Civil War Risks Triggering 'Epic, Biblical-Style Famine' in Sudan
"Millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake," warned the head of the World Food Program.
Mar 06, 2024
International humanitarian organizations warned Wednesday that Sudan's civil war risks triggering severe famine unless the fighting stops.
Fighting between rival factions of Sudan's military government broke out nearly 11 months ago and spread rapidly throughout the northeastern African nation of 46 million people. Around 15,000 people have been killed and nearly 6 million others displaced during the war, while an estimated 1.5 million Sudanese have fled the country as refugees.
Those who remain in Sudan are reeling from recent drought and flooding driven by the climate emergency, a potent two-punch combination that has pushed millions of people to the brink of famine.
"The war in Sudan risks triggering the world's largest hunger crisis," said Cindy McCain, director of the United Nations World Food Program, in a statement. "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. Millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake."
The crisis is particularly acute in and around the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and in the vast, arid western region of Darfur, where one of the warring factions, the Rapid Support Forces, and its allies have massacred, pillaged, and terrorized members of the predominantly Massalit community.
In Khartoum, hundreds of thousands of people are struggling to find food due to dwindling supplies for the communal kitchens on which many depend and a communications blackout. People venturing outside their homes in search of food run the risk of being shot or shelled amid the fighting.
Meanwhile, some areas of Darfur haven't received any food aid in nearly a year as fighting has rendered it practically impossible for humanitarian workers to operate. According to a February report by Doctors Without Borders, one child is dying of starvation every two hours, and nearly 40% of infants and toddlers are malnourished.
"We are in grave danger of epic, biblical-style famine in Sudan," warned Jan Egeland, who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, in a Reuters interview.
Egeland added that continued failure to deliver food aid to Darfur soon could mean "a death sentence for millions in desperate need."
According to the WFP:
Over 25 million people across Sudan, South Sudan, and Chad are trapped in a spiral of deteriorating food security. WFP is unable to get sufficient emergency food assistance to desperate communities in Sudan who are trapped by fighting because of the relentless violence and interference by the warring parties. Right now, 90% of people facing emergency levels of hunger in Sudan are stuck in areas that are largely inaccessible to WFP.
Humanitarian assistance has been further disrupted after authorities revoked permissions for cross-border truck convoys, forcing WFP to halt its operations from Chad into Darfur. Over one million people in West and Central Darfur had received WFP assistance via this lifeline route since August, and WFP was in the process of scaling up to support that number each month as hunger and malnutrition continue to skyrocket in Darfur.
Meanwhile, as hundreds of thousands of refugees flee into South Sudan and Chad, humanitarian efforts there have reached a breaking point.
"I met mothers and children who have fled for their lives not once, but multiple times, and now hunger is closing in on them," said McCain. "The consequences of inaction go far beyond a mother unable to feed her child and will shape the region for years to come. Today I am making an urgent plea for the fighting to stop, and that all humanitarian agencies must be allowed to do their lifesaving work."
WFP said it "urgently needs unimpeded access in Sudan to address the escalating food insecurity, which will have significant long-term impacts on the region, along with an injection of funding to respond to the spread of the humanitarian crisis to neighboring countries."
"Ultimately," the agency added, "a cessation of hostilities and lasting peace is the only way to reverse course and prevent catastrophe."
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Egypt Announces Regional Summit as UN Warns of 'Full-Scale Civil War' in Sudan
News of the upcoming meeting in Cairo followed U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres' warning that an ongoing armed conflict in Sudan could destabilize "the entire region."
Jul 09, 2023
Egypt announced Sunday that it plans to host a summit of Sudan's neighbors on July 13 to discuss how they might help broker an end to the 12-week battle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—an ongoing conflict that has exacerbated humanitarian crises in North Africa.
News of Thursday's meeting in Cairo came after United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned—in a Saturday statement issued by his deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq—that intensified fighting between the two factions "has pushed Sudan to the brink of a full-scale civil war, potentially destabilizing the entire region."
Since combat began on April 15 in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, hundreds of people have been killed and nearly three million have been displaced, including almost 700,000 who have fled to neighboring countries, many of which are already grappling with extreme poverty and the impacts of local armed conflicts.
Speaking from a refugee camp in Adre, on the Sudan-Chad border, Al Jazeera correspondent Ahmed Idris noted Sunday that "cases of malnutrition are on the rise in camps in eastern Chad and other parts of Chad where Sudanese refugees have moved to."
Reutersreported Sunday that previous diplomatic efforts to halt fighting between SAF and RSF "have so far proved ineffective, with competing initiatives creating confusion over how the warring parties might be brought to negotiate."
As the news outlet explained:
Neither Egypt, seen as the Sudanese army's most important foreign ally, nor the United Arab Emirates, which has had close ties to the RSF, have played a prominent public role.
The two countries were also not involved in talks in Jeddah led by the United States and Saudi Arabia that adjourned last month after failing to secure a lasting ceasefire.
Sudan's two largest neighbors, Egypt and Ethiopia, have been at odds in recent years over the construction of a huge hydroelectric dam on Ethiopia's Blue Nile, close to the border with Sudan.
The upcoming summit in Cairo "aims to 'develop effective mechanisms' with neighboring states to settle the conflict peacefully, in coordination with other regional or international efforts," Reuters reported, citing a statement from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
The current fighting in Sudan erupted following weeks of tensions between SAF commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, chair of Sudan's Transitional Sovereign Council, and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, or "Hemedti," the council's deputy chair.
The former allies joined forces to take control of Sudan in October 2021, two years after a 2019 military coup that occurred in the wake of a popular uprising to oust Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled Africa's third-largest country since leading the 1989 overthrow of a democratically elected government. However, during talks to establish a new transitional government, a dispute emerged over security force reform, turning al-Burhan and Dagalo—both of whom have long records of human rights abuses, including the brutal repression of pro-democracy activists—into rivals.
On Saturday, Guterres condemned a fresh air strike that killed at least 22 people in Omdurman, Sudan. After offering his condolences to the families of the victims and wishing a swift recovery to the dozens who were injured, the U.N. chief made clear that he is "appalled by reports of large-scale violence and casualties across Darfur" and "concerned about reports of renewed fighting in North Kordofan, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile States."
"There is an utter disregard for humanitarian and human rights law that is dangerous and disturbing," said Guterres' spokesperson. The U.N. chief reiterated his call for SAF and RSF "to cease fighting and commit to a durable cessation of hostilities." He also urged both sides "to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law to protect civilians and to enable humanitarian action."
According to Reuters, "Sudanese delegations, including from civilian parties that shared power with the army and RSF after the overthrow of former President Omar al-Bashir four years ago, are expected to meet on Monday in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for exploratory talks."
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