The UN is seeking $4.1 billion to provide humanitarian aid and protection to millions of people affected by the conflict that has raged since April 2023.
The UN asked for $4.1 billion to aid civilians caught in Sudan’s civil war and those who escaped as refugees, hoping for better fundraising this year due to the crisis’s “urgency”.
The war, which started in April 2023 between the Army and a militia, has led to a humanitarian disaster in this African nation and has put more than half of its 25 million people in need of assistance and protection.
UN experts say that thousands of people have lost their lives in this clash between the Army chief, Abdel Fatah al-Burhan, and his former ally and militia leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
According to these estimates, one city in the western Darfur region alone saw between 10,000 and 15,000 deaths.
“Ten months of war have taken away almost everything from the people of Sudan: their security, their homes and their vital livelihoods,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement, reported by AFP news agency.
Last year, the UN and other partner organizations got less than half the money they asked for, but they hope to raise more in 2024 by appealing to the “generosity of donors,” Griffiths said, as reported by Europa Press.
The war has hit Gezira state, Sudan’s pre-war “breadbasket”, and has caused widespread hunger with nearly 18 million people facing food insecurity.
Without water or help The fighting also damaged water supply systems and left three quarters of health facilities unusable when diseases like cholera, malaria and measles are spreading.
Sudan is the world’s largest displacement crisis, with almost 8 million people forced out of their homes by the war, 1.5 million of whom fled to neighboring countries, according to the UN.
Facing this “epic suffering”, the UN said they require $2.7 billion this year to help 14.7 million people in need in the country. Additionally, its refugee agency UNHCR asked for another 1.4 billion to assist those who left the country.
UNHCR High Commissioner Filippo Grandi, who just visited Ethiopia, said that all those affected have “the same message”: ‘We want peace to go back home and we need support to rebuild our lives.’”
“People are doing what they can to survive with the basic support that host communities and humanitarian partners can offer them. I urge the international community to increase its support for the people of Sudan. They urgently need help and they need it now “Grandi emphasized.
