The United Nations agency warned Monday that Sudan is nearing a “breaking point,” with an increasing number of people lacking essential food, water, shelter, and medical care amid escalating warfare, CNN reports.
Since the outbreak of fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) last year, more than eight million people have been forced to flee, leading the UN to describe the situation as “one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory.”
“Without an immediate, massive, and coordinated global response, we risk witnessing tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the coming months…. We are at breaking point, a catastrophic, cataclysmic breaking point,” Othman Belbeisi, the Middle East and Africa director for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said in a statement.
At least half of the displaced are children in a war tarred by “appalling levels of rights violations, ethnic targeting, massacres of civilian populations and gender-based violence,” the statement said.
Earlier this month, the UN-backed Famine Review Committee said at least one refugee camp in Sudan’s Darfur region is experiencing famine, which the agency has only declared twice in Sudan’s history. In May, the World Food Programme said people in that region had been forced to eat grass and peanut shells to survive.
“Over the next three months, an estimated 25.6 million people will face acute food insecurity as the conflict spreads and coping mechanisms are exhausted,” the IOM statement said.
Armed forces are also blocking urgently needed aid deliveries to Sudan, and the IOM said it needs additional funding to reach those in need. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said a key bridge used by aid workers to reach the Darfur region collapsed last week after severe flooding.
“This was the only safe route for humanitarian aid to reach Central & (South) Darfur,” MSF said Monday in a post on X. “This adds another major obstacle to our efforts in delivering life-saving aid to Sudan.”
The warning comes amid reports of fresh ceasefire negotiations, facilitated by the US and Saudi Arabia, is set to commence this week in Switzerland, as per the AP.
While the RSF, which originated from the Janjaweed militia responsible for the Darfur genocide in the early 2000s, has consented to participate in the discussions, Sudan’s military has not.
