UN warns Sudan conflict is ‘spiraling out of control’ as 4 million flee

Four months into the conflict in Sudan, more than 4 million people have been displaced while those left behind are running out of food and dying without healthcare, the United Nations has warned.

“Time is running out for farmers to plant the crops that will feed them and their neighbors. Medical supplies are scarce. The situation is spiraling out of control,” UN agencies said in a joint statement on Tuesday, August 15.

The war has caused more than 1 million people to cross from Sudan into neighboring countries, according to the latest figures published by the UN’s International Organization for Migration.

The number of people displaced within Sudan is estimated at over 3.4 million. Many refugees from Sudan have fled to countries that are already struggling with the impact of conflicts or economic crises, including Egypt, Chad, South Sudan and Ethiopia.

The millions who remain in the capital Khartoum and cities in the Darfur and Kordofan regions have faced looting and cuts to power, communications and water. “The remains of many of those killed have not been collected, identified or buried” but the UN estimates that more than 4,000 have been killed, said a spokesperson for the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The UN has documented at least 28 incidents of rape, and reports of sexual assaults have increased by 50 percent.

Call for funds

Sudan has been in crisis since 15 April, when months of tensions between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces erupted into fighting in Khartoum and elsewhere. The fighting has devastated Khartoum and sparked ethnically driven attacks in Darfur, threatening to plunge Sudan into a civil war.

Efforts led by Saudi Arabia and the United States to negotiate a ceasefire have stalled, and humanitarian agencies have struggled to provide relief because of insecurity, looting and bureaucratic hurdles. At a UN briefing in Geneva, World Health Organization spokesperson Margaret Harris appealed to the international community to do more to ease the suffering, saying: “The world is ignoring the dire needs.”

UN agencies said their two appeals for financial support, totaling more than $3 billion, were less than 27 percent funded. “For four gruesome months, the people of Sudan have been engulfed in a war that is destroying their lives and their homeland and violating their basic human rights,” leaders of the organizations said in a joint statement.

“The international community must step up today, engage at all levels, and act to put Sudan back on track and end the war,” it said.

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