UNITED NATIONS, United States: Fearing famine after nearly a year of conflict, the United Nations on Friday urged Sudan’s warring factions to provide unimpeded access to much-needed aid.
Since April last year, the war between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has killed tens of thousands of people, destroyed infrastructure and crippled the economy.
It has also caused a severe humanitarian crisis and severe shortage of food and has pushed the country to the brink of famine.
“Aid organisations require safe, rapid, sustained and unimpeded access — including across conflict lines within Sudan,” said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
“A massive mobilisation of resources from the international community is also critical,” he said further.
The UN’s World Food Programme has warned that the war risks “triggering the world’s largest hunger crisis”.
The emergency chief in Sudan for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, Jill Lawler, said there were enough aid stocks in Port Sudan, but, he said, the problem was getting the aid from there to the needy people.
Lawler said last week that he led the first UN mission to enter Khartoum state since the war began 11 months ago.
He told reporters in Geneva via video link from New York that he had seen firsthand that the scale and magnitude of the needs of children across the country is staggering.
War drives the country towards starvation and hunger is people’s number one concern, he said.
UNICEF representative in Sudan, Mandeep O’Brien, said 14 million children needed humanitarian aid as four million were displaced.
She took to X to state that there was only a “small window left to prevent mass loss of children lives and future”.
WHO regional director Hanan Balkhy, who recently returned from a trip to Sudan, emphasized the dire needs in Darfur, saying most health facilities had been looted, damaged or destroyed.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths deplored the escalation of fighting during the holy month of Ramadan, despite Security Council resolutions calling for a cessation of hostilities.
The United Nations on Friday called for more financial support for aid operations in Sudan.
UN spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci told reporters in Geneva that the UN has requested $2.7 billion in aid this year, but has received only 5 percent of that amount so far.
