Sudan one of world’s ‘worst crises’ in decades
The ongoing civil war in Sudan has provoked one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in decades, the international chief of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said yesterday.
War has raged for more than a year between the regular military under army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
“Sudan is one of the worst crises the world has seen for decades... yet the humanitarian response is profoundly inadequate,” said Christos Christou, international president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
“There are extreme levels of suffering across the country, and the needs are growing by the day,” he said in a post on social media platform X.
The conflict, which began in April 2023, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and displaced more than nine million people – the world’s worst internal displacement crisis – according to the United Nations.
Both sides have been accused of war crimes including deliberately targeting civilians, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas and blocking humanitarian aid, despite warnings that millions are on the brink of starvation.
Rights groups and the United States have also accused the paramilitaries of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
MSF’s intervention is the latest in a series of dire warnings over human suffering in Sudan. Last week, as it pledged another $315 million in aid to the country, the United States warned of historic famine in the country.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told reporters hunger in Sudan could reached levels unseen since the famine in Ethiopia in the early 1980s when as many as 1.2 million people died. (AFP)