Sudan is spiraling into death and destruction at “unprecedented” speed, the UN chief said on Monday, urging donors to pledge money to alleviate the suffering of tens of millions.
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Antonio Guterres’ statement came at a donors’ conference in Geneva amid a three-day ceasefire in Sudan that appears to have brought calm back to the capital, Khartoum.
“Without strong international support, Sudan could quickly become a place of anarchy, causing insecurity throughout the region,” the UN Secretary-General warned at the opening of the meeting.
According to the NGO Acled, more than 2,000 people have died in the two months of the conflict and more than 2.5 million have had to flee to other parts of Sudan or other countries.
So far, however, donors have been reluctant to fund the UN humanitarian aid plan.
Of the $3 billion the country is asking for this year, only 17% has been funded, while 25 million Sudanese, more than half the population, depend on humanitarian aid to survive.
Germany, co-organizer of the conference like the EU, Qatar, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, has pledged to pay 200 million euros by 2024, half of which are funds not yet allocated, and Qatar has pledged 50 million dollars.
The European Union has pledged 190 million euros in humanitarian and development aid.
On the ground, airstrikes and artillery strikes in Khartoum, where five million residents survive in the scorching heat, have stopped since Sunday morning.
There was no fighting in the city on Monday, the second day of the 72-hour ceasefire due to end on Wednesday at 6 a.m. local time, according to several residents polled by AFP.
Fighting erupted more than two months ago, on April 15, between the army commanded by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) paramilitaries under General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo.
After a dozen systematic ceasefire violations, the warring factions have pledged to allow humanitarian aid through this East African country, one of the poorest in the world.
AFP
But everything is missing. The start of the rainy season is fueling fears of epidemics, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday, describing the garbage that is accumulating, the bodies still lying outdoors in hard-to-reach areas. And he points out that out of desperation, many residents are forced to drink unsafe water from the Nile or other sources.
The Red Cross, UN organizations and other NGOs must also help Sudan’s neighboring countries, which are themselves experiencing economic crisis or violence, to take in the refugees.
For several weeks, Saudi Arabia and the United States have acted as mediators between the two camps. They secured brief ceasefires but failed to start negotiations on a plan to end the crisis.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdelrahman Al-Thani hailed mediation efforts as well as those by the African Union and Igad, the East African bloc that includes Sudan, at the conference on Monday.
“There is no other solution than a political one,” he stressed.
AFP
Of particular concern is the situation in Darfur, a vast region of western Sudan where soldiers, paramilitaries, tribal fighters and armed civilians are clashing.
Also in Geneva, British Ambassador Simon Manley said Monday during a session of the UN Human Rights Council on Sudan that he was “particularly appalled by stories of rising ethnic violence, sexual violence and sexism in parts of Darfur”.
According to the United Nations, Darfur was devastated by a war back in the 2000s that killed around 300,000 people and displaced nearly 2.5 million. The United Nations warned that a new “humanitarian catastrophe” was imminent and referred to possible “crimes against humanity”.
In Darfur, “the conflict now has an ethnic dimension,” the United Nations, the African Union and Igad warned in a joint statement, “with targeted attacks based on people’s identities and displacement of populations.”
According to the United Nations, more than 150,000 people have fled Darfur to Chad.