The International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned on Monday that the humanitarian situation in Sudan is at “a catastrophic breaking point” due to the numerous crises facing the African country, marked by 16 months of war between the army and a powerful paramilitary group.
According to the IOM, this “brutal conflict” has turned Sudan into the scene of the worst displacement crisis on the planet, while pushing millions of Sudanese into famine, according to a statement from the UN agency.
“Without an immediate, massive and coordinated global response, we risk witnessing tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the coming months. We are at a breaking point, a catastrophic and cataclysmic breaking point,” said Othman Belbeisi, IOM’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, in the statement.
According to UN figures, the war has caused the internal displacement of more than 7.9 million people in a country where there were already 2.8 million internally displaced people before the conflict, which began on April 15, 2023, and which has turned Sudan into a territory with more than 10.7 million displaced people.
In addition, 97% of these displaced people are “in localities with acute levels of food insecurity or worse,” according to the statement, which noted that half a million people live in the Zamzam camp – located in the western state of North Darfur – amid “extreme food shortages.”
IOM said this is compounded by widespread flooding, triggered by heavy rains in Sudan, which has led to the additional displacement of more than 20,000 people since June in 11 of the country’s 18 states.
The UN agency recalled that “humanitarian and protection conditions in Sudan are among the worst in the world” and that the ongoing conflict is characterized by “atrocious levels of rights violations, ethnic attacks, massacres of civilian populations and gender-based violence.”
Given this situation, the IOM estimates that in the coming months around 25.6 million people will face acute food insecurity as the conflict spreads “and coping mechanisms are exhausted.”
In this regard, he recalled that restrictions on humanitarian access to the affected areas have “severely reduced the capacity of aid organizations” to save lives. EFE
