UN: Urgent ceasefire needed for humanitarian aid in Sudan
Published: Monday, Aug 12th 2024, 09:10
Back to Live Feed
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) is urgently calling for a ceasefire in Sudan. On Wednesday, renewed ceasefire negotiations are to take place for the conflict, which has been going on for almost a year and a half and in which all agreements have so far failed. "It is the world's biggest hunger crisis. Every second Sudanese suffers from hunger. That's 25 million people - the equivalent of the population of Australia," WFP Sudan spokesperson Lena Kinzli told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND).
A bloody power struggle has been raging in Sudan since April 2023 between the de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. According to the UN, the conflict has triggered the world's largest refugee crisis. More than ten million people have been displaced or fled, many of them several times.
Prospects of an agreement are considered slim
In a camp for displaced people near the besieged city of Al-Fasher in the state of North Darfur, the world's first famine in seven years has been confirmed, said Kinzli. At least around 600,000 people are affected by this highest escalation level of hunger crises there. "However, the famine is not just affecting a few areas, but the whole country. Aid must reach the country as quickly as possible so that the dramatic situation does not deteriorate any further," said Kinzli.
The prospects of reaching an agreement at Wednesday's negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, are considered slim. A delegation from the Sudanese army described preliminary talks with a US representative in Saudi Arabia as unsuccessful. The army leadership must now decide whether it wants to participate at all. Over the past few days, fighting has continued in Sudan with injuries and deaths, including in Omdurman near the capital Khartoum and Al-Fasher.
©Keystone/SDA
English 
German 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic