{"id":14363,"date":"2024-02-17T10:26:50","date_gmt":"2024-02-17T10:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=14363"},"modified":"2024-02-17T10:26:50","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T10:26:50","slug":"houthi-attacks-in-red-sea-impedes-aid-to-sudan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/17\/houthi-attacks-in-red-sea-impedes-aid-to-sudan\/","title":{"rendered":"Houthi Attacks in Red Sea Impedes Aid to Sudan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Fred Harter<\/strong><\/p>\n

Attacks by Houthi forces against ships in the Red Sea are holding up shipments of vital aid to Sudan and driving up costs for cash-strapped humanitarian agencies in the east African country, where conflict has put millions at risk of famine.
\nThe attacks mean ships carrying aid from Asia to Port Sudan must now circumnavigate Africa, traverse the Mediterranean and then enter the Red Sea via the Suez Canal from the north, resulting in huge delays and increased costs.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s making our operations very expensive,\u201d said Etizaz Youssuf, Sudan country director for the International Rescue Committee. \u201cShipments that took one or two weeks, maximum, now take months to reach us.\u201d
\nFighting since April between rival military factions has devastated Sudan. Half of the country\u2019s population of 48 million requires urgent food aid and nearly 8 million people have been forced to flee their homes, prompting the world\u2019s largest internal displacement crisis.
\nAid groups responding to the crisis were already grappling with insecurity, crippling funding shortages and bureaucratic hurdles when the Iran-backed Houthis started attacking Red Sea ships in November, demanding an end to Israel\u2019s Gaza offensive.
\nSmaller shipments of aid are being disembarked at ports in the United Arab Emirates, driven across Saudi Arabia and then shipped to Sudan from Jeddah, a route that avoids the Yemeni coast. Other aid is being flown in from Kenya or driven across the Egyptian border.
\nAll these routes take longer, cost far more and involve greater quantities of routine than shipping supplies directly to Port Sudan, the main hub for aid agencies in the country, said Omer Sharfi, the local head of supply chain management for Save the Children Organization.
\n\u201cThe Houthi issue has completely choked the market,\u201d Sharfi said. \u201cMedical consumables are very scarce.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\nThe closure of the Red Sea meant a shipment of life-saving nutritional supplies, due to be distributed by Save the Children in late November, only arrived in January, said Sharfi.
\nAnother major Aid Group, which declined to be named for security reasons, said it was still waiting for two shipments of insulin and other medicines.
\nThese supplies were supposed to reach beneficiaries in January but are stuck in Dubai. The Organization is facing air-freight costs of $160,000 (\u00a3127,000) to transport its next batch of medicines, compared with the $20,000 it previously cost to ship them by sea.
\nChildren are already dying of hunger and preventable illnesses in Sudan\u2019s western Darfur region, where fighting and banditry are hindering humanitarian access. Aid workers fear the coming months will bring mass starvation to much of Sudan.
\nThe Red Sea crisis is making it even harder to respond, said Kashif Shafiq, the Sudan head of Relief International, who described the situation as \u201ccatastrophic\u201d.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s additional costs and delays,\u201d said Shafiq. \u201cBut right now, with the situation we are facing on the ground, we need immediate action to move supplies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Fred Harter Attacks by Houthi forces against ships in the Red Sea are holding up shipments of vital aid to Sudan and driving up costs for cash-strapped humanitarian agencies in the east African country, where conflict has put millions at risk of famine. The attacks mean ships carrying aid from Asia to Port Sudan …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14365,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363\/revisions\/14365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}