By SUDAN TRIBUNE
March 7, 2024 (PORT SUDAN) – Sudan’s war has shattered millions of lives and created the world’s largest displacement crisis, a top United Nations official said.
Cindy McCain, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director warned at the conclusion of her visit to Sudan that the catastrophe also risks becoming the world’s largest hunger crisis, unless the ongoing fighting stops.
She met families fleeing violence and the escalating hunger emergency in Sudan.
“The war in Sudan risks triggering the world’s largest hunger crisis,” warned the WFP official, adding “20 years ago, Darfur was the world’s largest hunger crisis and the world rallied to respond. But today, the people of Sudan have been forgotten. Millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake.”
According to the United Nations, more than 25 million people across Sudan, South Sudan and Chad are trapped in a spiral of deteriorating food security.
WFP, in a statement, said is unable to get sufficient emergency food assistance to desperate communities in Sudan who are trapped by fighting because of the relentless violence and interference by the warring parties in Sudan’s conflict.
Right now, WFP stated, 90 per cent of people facing emergency levels of hunger in Sudan are stuck in areas that are largely inaccessible to the food agency.
Humanitarian assistance has been further disrupted after authorities revoked permissions for cross-border truck convoys, forcing WFP to halt its operations from Chad into Darfur. Over one million people in West and Central Darfur had received WFP assistance via this life-line route since August, and WFP was in the process of scaling up to support that number each month as hunger and malnutrition continue to skyrocket in Darfur.
Meanwhile, more and more people are fleeing into South Sudan and Chad and the humanitarian response is at breaking point.
The top WFP official travelled to Renk in eastern South Sudan where almost 600,000 people have crossed from Sudan in the last 10 months. She visited the crowded transit camps where families arrive hungry and are met with more hunger.
Newly arrived displaced people in South Sudan make up 35 percent of those facing catastrophic levels of hunger – the highest possible level – despite accounting for less than 3 percent of the population. Additionally, one in five children at the transit centres at the main border crossing is malnourished. With current resources, WFP is struggling to keep pace with the significant level of need.
“I met mothers and children who have fled for their lives not once, but multiple times, and now hunger is closing in on them,” stressed McCain.
She added, “The consequences of inaction go far beyond a mother unable to feed her child and will shape the region for years to come. Today I am making an urgent plea for the fighting to stop, and that all humanitarian agencies must be allowed to do their life-saving work.”
WFP urgently needs unimpeded access in Sudan to address the escalating food insecurity, which will have significant long-term impacts on the region, along with an injection of funding to respond to the spread of the humanitarian crisis to neighbouring countries. Ultimately, a cessation of hostilities and lasting peace is the only way to reverse course and prevent catastrophe.
(ST)
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