The United Nations appealed Friday for Sudan\u2019s battling factions to allow delivery of humanitarian relief to fend off looming \u201ccatastrophic\u201d hunger.
\nSome five million Sudanese could face calamitous food insecurity in coming months as a nearly yearlong war between rival generals continues to tear the country apart.
\nThe war between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has since April last year killed tens of thousands, destroyed infrastructure and crippled the economy.
\nIt has also triggered a dire humanitarian crisis and acute food shortages, with the country teetering on the brink of famine.
\nNoting that some 18 million Sudanese are already facing acute food insecurity — a record during harvest season — UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned in a letter to the Security Council that \u201calmost 5 million people could slip into catastrophic food insecurity in some parts of the country in the coming months.\u201d
\nHe noted that nearly 730,000 Sudanese children — including more than 240,000 in Darfur — are thought to suffer from \u201csevere\u201d malnutrition.
\n\u201cAid organizations require safe, rapid, sustained and unimpeded access — including across conflict lines within Sudan,\u201d said
\nGuterres\u2019s spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
\n\u201cA massive mobilization of resources from the international community is also critical,\u201d he added.
\nThe UN\u2019s World Food Programme has warned that the war risks \u201ctriggering the world\u2019s largest hunger crisis.\u201d
\nJill Lawler, the emergency chief in Sudan for the UN children\u2019s agency UNICEF, said there were enough aid stocks in Port Sudan, but the problem was getting the aid from there to the people in need.
\nLawler said she last week had led the first UN mission to reach Khartoum state since war erupted 11 months ago.
\nThey had seen first-hand that \u201cthe scale and magnitude of needs for children across the country are simply staggering,\u201d she told reporters in Geneva via video link from New York.
\nThe war \u201cis pushing the country towards a famine\u201d with hunger \u201cthe number one concern people expressed.\u201d
\nMandeep O\u2019Brien, UNICEF representative in Sudan, said 14 million children needed humanitarian aid and four million were displaced.
\nThere was only a \u201csmall window left to prevent mass loss of children\u2019s lives and future,\u201d she warned on X, formerly Twitter.
\nWorld Health Organization regional director Hanan Balkhy,
\nunderlined the acute needs in Darfur, saying most health facilities were looted, damaged or destroyed.
\nGriffiths, the UN aid chief, lamented that fighting continued to rage during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan despite a Security Council resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities.
\n\u201cThis is a moment of truth,\u201d he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. \u201cThe parties must silence the guns, protect civilians and ensure humanitarian access.\u201d
\nThe UN called for more financial support for aid operations in Sudan.
\nUN spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci told reporters in Geneva that the world body had appealed for $2.7 billion to provide aid this year but had received just five percent of that amount so far<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Nations appealed Friday for Sudan\u2019s battling factions to allow delivery of humanitarian relief to fend off looming \u201ccatastrophic\u201d hunger. Some five million Sudanese could face calamitous food insecurity in coming months as a nearly yearlong war between rival generals continues to tear the country apart. The war between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16258","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16260,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16258\/revisions\/16260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}