High-level meeting in New York to address Sudans humanitarian crisis
Follow-up - moatinoon
The Sudanese crisis and its consequences, which have entered its sixth month, are at the forefront of the agenda of todays high-level meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The United Nations meeting brings together Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the European Union and the African Union.
The meeting discusses operational challenges and lack of humanitarian access, proposes solutions and urges timely and flexible support for the United Nations response plans in the Sudan and the region.
As hostilities and ethnic violence spread, the humanitarian crisis threatens to consume the entire country, while Sudans neighbours face an increasing influx of refugees and returnees.
The crisis in the Sudan is becoming more serious by the day, and the needs are escalating. Tireless efforts are being made to deliver cross-border aid convoys to Darfur and cross conflict lines within the country, but the process is boring, bureaucratic and dangerous - far from the unrestricted and safe access to the people we must have. We are working hard to expand humanitarian access, but we need a political process to end the fighting and start building a new Sudan”, The United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said.
Reports from international organizations indicate high rates of malnutrition, foreshadowing early deaths of thousands of Sudanese children. Half the population is food insecure, and more than 6 million people are only one step away from famine. Measles and other diseases are widespread, and sexual and gender-based violence is taking a terrible toll on women and girls. More than 5 million people have been displaced from their homes, including more than 1 million who have taken refuge in neighbouring Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan.
Millions of people have already been forced from their homes by the war in the Sudan, and every day more and more must run for safety. They need urgent assistance -- humanitarian assistance to keep them alive, as well as emergency development interventions to provide conditions and opportunities for living in dignity where they can return home. But above all, they need the guns to shut up and this foolish war to stop”, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grande, said.
Although relief efforts have expanded, they remain inadequate and underfunded, and relief workers face significant access challenges on the ground. Neighbouring countries are also struggling to meet the needs of refugees fleeing violence.
Millions of people -- particularly in Khartoum, Darfur and Kordofan -- lack food, water, shelter, electricity, education and health care. Children needed urgent assistance, with 1.7 million children reportedly at risk of losing life-saving vaccines and nearly 700,000 severely malnourished children at high risk of not surviving.
