The armed conflict in Sudan, triggered since mid-April, has caused a massive displacement of the population seeking to flee the fighting and its collateral damage. In parallel with these 430,000 displaced Sudanese, the UN is also issuing the alert on the lack of means of the NGOs on the spot.
After the birth of a violent armed conflict between two rival generals in Sudan, since April 15, in which millions of people find themselves trapped, the UN revealed that a total of at least 430,000 people had already fled their lands.
Among these citizens forced to leave their place of residence, just over 334,000 were moved to other regions of the country, the UN said, while 100,000 others preferred to leave Sudanese soil.
“The number of people displaced in the past two weeks exceeds all conflict-related displacement in Sudan in 2022,” said a spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
On the spot, despite the announcement of an extended truce initiated on April 24, the fighting continues while the humanitarian situation is heading towards a “catastrophe”. If these clashes continue to rage over the next few days and weeks, the United Nations expects an exodus of more than 800,000 people. The bulk of them are expected to go to Chad, Egypt and South Sudan.
“This emergency is in its early stages, and we are trying to put numbers to give an idea of the magnitude of this emergency,” said a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees ( UNHCR), Olga Sarrado, during a press briefing in Geneva.
In the coming weeks, UNHCR should have a better view of the situation as the registration of refugees takes place.
Lack of humanitarian means and biological risk
At present, according to Olga Sarrado, “it is estimated at more than 100,000” the number of people who have already fled to foreign countries. But for those who did not have this opportunity to leave, humanitarian aid is of vital importance on the ground.
“It is very difficult to predict what will happen. It will depend on what happens in Sudan,” warned Olga Sarrado.
In this sense, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), Jens Laerke, called on the international community on Tuesday to strengthen its support for humanitarian organizations.
“Without that, they simply cannot operate,” he argued at the regular UN briefing in Geneva, noting that humanitarian agencies were already short of funds to finance their humanitarian operations in Sudan even before the current escalation.
Sudan’s aid program for this year is currently only 14% funded and aid agencies are $1.5 billion short of the humanitarian crisis aggravated by ongoing fighting. Finally, for its part, the WHO has again alerted to the health risks incurred by civilians in the midst of the violent fighting. The organization also judged that the risk of a laboratory being taken over by combatants was now “moderate”.
