Newly arrived Sudanese refugees wait to be registered in order to collect food aid at the Oure Cassoni refugee camp on Feb. 24, in Oure Cassoni, Chad.Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
As the Sudan war enters its fourth year this week, relief workers are becoming increasingly desperate in their search for ways to draw global attention to the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis.
The death toll, after three years of fighting, is believed to be in the hundreds of thousands, although nobody has a comprehensive count. Two-thirds of Sudan’s 52 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, with four million acutely malnourished and nearly 12 million having fled their homes.
Despite the escalating emergency, budget shortfalls have forced the United Nations to slash its food assistance in Sudan by 14 per cent this year, according to the UN food agency. Many Western governments have cut their foreign aid over the past year, leading to sharp reductions in food rations.
The UN says it has “hyper-prioritized” its Sudan plans to focus on areas of greatest need, but even its modest appeal for US$2.8-billion this year has floundered; so far, only 16 per cent of the target has been reached, it says.
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In their pleas for help, UN officials are voicing frustration and bafflement. “Sudan is the size of France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined,” said Denise Brown, the veteran Canadian aid worker who heads UN relief operations in Sudan. “It’s hard to miss. But the world seems to be able to look right past it as if it’s not there.”
In a commentary on a UN website, Ms. Brown said her “greatest moment of shame” came last October in the North Darfur town of Tawila when she met women and children fleeing a massacre in the nearby city of El Fasher. A lack of funds meant the aid response was inadequate. “They made it to us, but I didn’t have enough to offer,” she said.
In a separate call to journalists Monday from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, Ms. Brown rejected the idea that the world had simply forgotten the Sudan war. “Please don’t call this a forgotten crisis,” she said. “I’m referring to this as an abandoned crisis.”
She cited the long list of massacres and atrocities in the war, including in El Fasher, where at least 6,000 civilians were killed in just three days. “What more has to happen for everyone to sit up and pay attention, to find a solution?” she asked.
A shortage of funds and supplies, meanwhile, has triggered the shutdown of more than 40 per cent of Sudan’s community kitchens over the past six months, according to a survey released Tuesday by Islamic Relief, a humanitarian group.
A woman checks pots of cooking food while preparing meals at the kitchen of a centre sheltering people displaced by conflict in Sudan's eastern city of Gedaref in August 2024.EBRAHIM HAMID/AFP/Getty Images
The community kitchens are the “last lifeline” for millions of vulnerable people, but donations are drying up and inflation is soaring as a result of Sudan’s economic crisis and the Iran war, the group said.
Officials from around the world are meeting in Berlin on Wednesday to discuss fundraising and diplomatic efforts. Canada’s secretary of state for international development, Randeep Sarai, is among those attending.
But neither of the two warring parties – the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – is participating in the conference, casting doubt on its success. After a series of failed ceasefire plans in the past, the war has intensified.
“Minimal, half-hearted and lacklustre responses from the African Union, the UN Security Council and other international and regional actors have only emboldened the perpetrators to continue carrying out these attacks,” Amnesty International secretary-general Agnès Callamard said Tuesday.
Fierce fighting continued in Sudan this week. Drone attacks by Sudan’s army reportedly killed at least 20 civilians Sunday and Monday, five of them in a crowded market in West Darfur. Nearly 700 people have died in drone attacks in Sudan this year, the UN human rights office says.