IOM humanitarian cross-border convoy from Chad has arrived in West Darfur, Sudan carrying critical aid

GOOD news. Humanitarian cross-border convoy from Chad has arrived in West Darfur, Sudan carrying long awaited critical aid. Great job done by all.

IOM humanitarian cross-border convoy from #Chad has arrived in #WestDarfur carrying critical aid to reach over 46,000 ppl affected by conflict across Darfur, thanks to @Solidarites_Int & @USAIDSavesLives.

Needs are dire.Unimpeded access is needed to ensure we #LeaveNoOneBehind. pic.twitter.com/1zZwreWpEa

— IOM Sudan 🇺🇳 (@IOMSudan) December 28, 2023

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UK has a key role to play in fighting for peace in Sudan

RIGHT NOW IN SUDAN, over five million people have been displaced and many thousands killed. Twenty-four million people – half the population – need humanitarian assistance, 15 million suffer from acute food insecurity and 19 million children are out of school. Recent analysis has shown that at least 68 villages in Darfur have been burnt to the ground by armed militia in the past few months.  The UK's APPG hopes that more can be done to stop the flow of arms to warring parties by putting greater pressure on their regional backers, enforcing the existing UN arms embargo on Darfur and extending it to the entire country. Read more in the following article.

From Politics Home, UK

By Vicky Ford MP @vickyford

Dated Thursday, 9 November 2023 - here is a copy in full:

The UK has a key role to play in fighting for peace in Sudan

Wreckage in Khartoum (Credit: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo)

October marked six months since the beginning of the war in Sudan and two years since the military coup that first dashed hopes of Sudan’s swift road to democracy. There is no clear winner and no end in sight.

Over five million people have been displaced and many thousands killed. Twenty-four million people – half the population – need humanitarian assistance, 15 million suffer from acute food insecurity and 19 million children are out of school. Of the $2.6bn required for humanitarian assistance, only $859m is available. 

Members of the [UK Govt] All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Sudan and South Sudan met with Liela Musa Medani, a Sudanese woman who has previously lived in the United Kingdom for over 20 years. She escaped from Khartoum in July but remains in touch with family members. Of the 50 households that used to live in her street, only four remain. 

For the past six months, they have faced killings and artillery shelling every single day. There is no food, and anyone who tries to transport food risks their life. There is no electricity, no water, no medicine and no humanitarian aid. The few people left in that once mighty city cannot leave. School buildings are now cemeteries. Girls have learned to disfigure themselves to try to avoid being raped.

Ethnic cleansing has returned to Darfur. Twenty years ago, during the genocide, between 300,000 and 400,000 people were killed, either directly in the conflict or indirectly. Recent analysis has shown that at least 68 villages in Darfur have been burnt to the ground by armed militia in the past few months.  

Since the war began, many of those forced to leave their homes have fled towards Chad and South Sudan. Over 320,000 Sudanese have crossed the border into Egypt, while many others are still stranded at the borders.

The UK has a key role to play due to our close historical relations with Sudan, the trust many Sudanese people still place in us and our role as a penholder in the United Nations Security Council. The significant Sudanese diaspora community in the UK includes NHS doctors. 

The UK has sanctioned some of the financial networks of the warring parties, sponsored a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council establishing an independent Commission of Enquiry to investigate alleged human rights violations and provided diplomatic and practical support to help pro-democracy civilians cohere around a common platform.

The UK should continue to press for an immediate ceasefire to facilitate humanitarian access, scale up life-saving support and support better co-ordination between different regional and international mediation initiatives. 

The APPG hopes that more can be done to stop the flow of arms to warring parties by putting greater pressure on their regional backers, enforcing the existing UN arms embargo on Darfur and extending it to the entire country. Targeted sanctions should also be extended to old regime loyalists who are calling for the continuation of the war.   

There are two potentially encouraging developments. The Jeddah talks, suspended since June, have resumed and Sudanese civilian leaders have met in Addis Ababa aiming to build a united Democratic Civilian Front to end the war, deliver vital humanitarian assistance and secure a path to democratic government. This may create momentum for further unification of democratic civilian voices. Nevertheless, the prospects for ending the war remain very uncertain.  

It is in the UK’s strategic interest to try to prevent the spread of terrorism, increased migration and the destabilisation of the wider region. Therefore it remains important that the UK continues to play an active diplomatic role and try to find a path to peace.

Vicky Ford, Conservative MP for Chelmsford, former minister for Africa and chair of the APPG for Sudan and South Sudan

View original: https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/uk-key-role-play-fighting-peace-sudan

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In Chad, as in Sudan, tragic stories and soaring needs

Article at World Food Programme
By Elizabeth Bryant
Dated 24 July 2023 - here is a copy in full:

In Chad, as in Sudan, tragic stories and soaring needs

‘This is the price innocent people pay for war’ – WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain urges the international community to step up to help the ‘injured and malnourished

Sudanese refugee Hiba from West Darfur, Chad, survived hunger and deadly violence that has swept her homeland. 

Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

They arrive in Chad by the thousands, the vast majority women and children crossing a desolate wind-swept border from Sudan. Some come on rickety carts and vehicles piled high with hastily gathered belongings; others by foot, with just the clothes on their backs. 

Many also bring with them horrific tales of killings and other abuses by assailants they cannot forget.  

“They took everything,” said 23-year-old Hiba from Sudan’s West Darfur region  (her real name has been withheld for her protection). “Money, food, clothes. They even killed relatives, friends.”

Three months of ferocious fighting in Sudan has displaced more than 3 million people, killed and injured thousands of others and fed already alarming hunger numbers, including in neighboring countries. Of those fleeing Sudan, an estimated 330,000 refugees and returning nationals have poured into Chad alone, swelling a refugee population that is already the largest in West and Central Africa. 

“The people I spoke with on the Chad-Sudan border told me absolutely heartbreaking stories of their dangerous journey, and of loved ones they lost along the way,” said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain, during a visit to Chad last week with United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed.

WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain during a visit to Adre, Chad. 

Photo: WFP/Julian Civiero

“Too many are injured and malnourished,” she added. “This is the price innocent people pay for war – what these people have been through is unacceptable, and the world must step up and help them.”

WFP is rapidly scaling up food and nutrition support, reaching roughly 164,000 new arrivals from Sudan to date, with plans to expand further to reach up to two million people countrywide in the coming months.

In Sudan, WFP has delivered food and nutrition assistance to more than 1.4 million people, despite daunting challenges. But continued fighting and access restrictions by warring parties make it extremely difficult for us to reach the millions more caught up in the conflict. That’s especially the case in West Darfur, where there are alarming reports of atrocities against civilians. 

Women who have fled Sudan's conflict receive WFP food assistance in Zabout Refugee camp in Chad. Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

With fears that Sudan’s conflict could escalate further, potentially destabilizing the broader region, support for WFP food assistance in places like Chad – which can help maintain peace and stability – is more important than ever. 

“The global community faces a decision point,” said McCain. “We either act now and stop Chad from becoming another victim of this crisis that has gripped the region, or wait and act when it’s too late.”

Today, the mounting needs far outpace our available resources. In Chad, WFP plans to reach 2 million refugees and vulnerable Chadians with emergency assistance. But we cannot even assist half of them due to insufficient funds.

“In all my years with WFP I’ve never seen crises at this level with such little financing," said WFP's country director for Chad, Pierre Honnorat.

Thousands of conflict-displaced people have ended up in displacement camps in Adre, Chad. Photo: WFP/Julian Civiero

Some of the new arrivals are severely injured, some children so malnourished it is too late to save them. 

Meanwhile, seasonal rains in Chad risk cutting off key supply routes for food and other life-saving humanitarian supplies.

“It's no longer about giving them hope or safety,” Honnorat said. “They need to eat every day. The situation is really critical.”

Even before Sudan's conflict broke out, Chad faced soaring hunger. Today, a projected 1.9 million people countrywide are struggling with severe food insecurity during the June-August lean season between harvests. Around 1.3 million children are acutely malnourished, with some of the highest rates in refugee communities. 

Many of Sudan’s newly displaced have ended up, for now, in camps around the eastern Chadian border town of Adre.

Many of those crossing into Chad have been wounded in Sudan's conflict and some children are severely malnourished. 

Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

Children chase each other around the newly erected stick-and-tarp shelters that dot a desert landscape recently greened by rains. Women in colorful robes wait patiently for WFP food distributions.

Inside her tent, Hiba cradles an infant daughter as she recalls her family’s flight to safety from West Darfur’s capital of El Geneina, where some of the worst violence has occurred. 

“They did such horrible things,” she said of the attackers, adding, “the most important thing is health and security – and even more important is food.” 

“We can see that they have suffered, many lost family members,” said WFP’s  Honnorat of the new arrivals, roughly 90 percent of whom are women and children. 

“You don't even dare ask that, 'Where are the men?'” he adds.  “You know the answer from others – that often they were killed.”

Abuobida, whose last name has also been withheld for his protection, counts among those men who made it out of Sudan alive. Like Hiba, he is also from El Geneina. He too lost friends and family in the fighting.

“They came to kill people, so they were on the road with motorbikes, with guns and with cars,” he recalls. “They entered houses and they took people’s things.”

During his journey to safety, he saw dead bodies along the roads. Abuobida arrived in Adre last month, alone and destitute. His family later joined him. 

He points to a small sack of sorghum and a pile of clothes inside the family’s tarp tent. “We don’t have anything else,” he said.

’They came to kill people,’  says Sudan refugee Abuobida of assailants in his home region of West Darfur. Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

Many of those arriving have serious injuries. Children especially are malnourished. The most severe cases are hospitalized, with WFP providing temporary units for a makeshift hospital and medical logistics. But for some of the sickest, it’s too late. 

“Every week, children are dying,” said WFP’s Honnorat, stressing the importance of early malnutrition prevention and treatment.  

As Sudan’s conflict enters its fourth month, there is no reprieve either for Chad. 

“It’s a serious crisis,” Honnorat added, “and the problem is many more people are coming.” 

WFP urgently requires US$157 million to assist some 2 million people in greatest need in Chad and to stabilize a deteriorating situation. 

Learn more about WFP's work in Chad and Sudan click here to DONATE

View original: https://www.wfp.org/stories/chad-sudan-tragic-stories-and-soaring-needs

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