The United Nations’ (UN) appeal for humanitarian aid to help Sudan, gripped by civil war and sinking into crisis, is “catastrophically underfunded”, to the tune of only 12%, denounced the UN on Friday May 17. The UN and other humanitarian partners need $2.7 billion (around 2.5 billion euros) this year to help some 15 million people in urgent need, Jens Laerke said. spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in Geneva.
“Famine is getting closer. Diseases are getting closer. “The fighting is moving closer to civilians, particularly in Darfur,” Laerke said at the regular UN press briefing in Geneva, recalling that globally 25 million people, or half of Sudan’s population, need assistance. “This is not just an underfunded appeal, it is a catastrophically underfunded appeal,” he stressed. Without the rapid arrival of additional resources, humanitarian organizations will not be able to scale up their efforts in time to stave off famine and prevent further deprivation. »
For a year, Sudan has been in the grip of a war between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Al-Bourhane, and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), of his former deputy, now rival, the General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo. For several weeks, the international community has been warning of imminent carnage in El-Fasher, the last major city in Darfur not to have fallen into the hands of the RSF, which was until then relatively spared.
In a telephone conversation Tuesday with the two warring generals, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk “urged them both to act immediately – and publicly – to defuse the situation.” , said its spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, during the press briefing. The high commissioner, who called the two men separately, had been trying since August 2023 to speak to them directly, Shamdasani said. He “expressed his deep distress” to them and called for respect for international law as well as a ceasefire.
