Agencies consider new aid route into Sudan from S. Sudan as humanitarian crisis worsens, cholera spreads

FIGHTING AND RED TAPE have hampered aid access in Sudan. Hunger and diseases including cholera are spreading. Aid agencies are looking at delivering aid to Sudan on a new route from South Sudan as they struggle to access much of the country. 

The war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has left nearly half of Sudan's 49 million people requiring aid. More than 7.5 million people have fled their homes, making Sudan the biggest displacement crisis globally, and hunger is rising. 

Aid supplies have been looted and humanitarian workers attacked, while international agencies and NGOs have long complained about bureaucratic obstacles to get into the army-controlled hub of Port Sudan and obtain travel permits for access to other parts of the country. Read more.

From Reuters

Reporting by Aidan Lewis

Editing by Christina Fincher

Dated Monday, 15 January 2024, 5:51 PM GMT - here is a copy in full:

Agencies consider new aid route into Sudan as humanitarian crisis worsens

Jan 15 (Reuters) - Aid agencies are looking at delivering aid to Sudan on a new route from South Sudan as they struggle to access much of the country, a senior U.N. official said on Monday, nine months into a war that has caused a major humanitarian crisis.

The war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has left nearly half of Sudan's 49 million people requiring aid. More than 7.5 million people have fled their homes, making Sudan the biggest displacement crisis globally, and hunger is rising.

Aid supplies have been looted and humanitarian workers attacked, while international agencies and NGOs have long complained about bureaucratic obstacles to get into the army-controlled hub of Port Sudan and obtain travel permits for access to other parts of the country.

"There's a very, very difficult operating environment, very hard," Rick Brennan, regional emergencies director for the World Health Organization (WHO), said in a press briefing in Cairo on Monday.

Aid agencies lost access to Wad Madani, a former aid hub in the important El Gezira agricultural region southeast of Khartoum, after the RSF seized it from the army last month.

The RSF's advance into El Gezira state and fighting that erupted recently involving the army, the RSF and Sudan's third-most powerful military force, the SPLM-North, in South Kordofan, have sparked new displacement.

U.N. and other agencies have been largely restricted to operating out of Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, and delivering aid from Chad into the western region of Darfur, where there have been waves of ethnically-driven killings.

"We're also looking at establishing cross-border operations from South Sudan into the southern parts of the Kordofan states of Sudan," said Brennan.

DISEASE OUTBREAKS

Health services, already badly weakened when the war broke out in mid-April, have been further eroded.

"We have at least six major disease outbreaks, including cholera," said Brennan.

"We've also got outbreaks of measles and dengue fever, of vaccine-derived polio, of malaria and so on. And hunger levels are soaring as well because of the lack of access of food."

Diplomats and aid workers say that the army and officials aligned with it have hampered humanitarian access as both sides pursue their military campaigns. Activists say neighbourhood volunteers have been targeted.

They say the RSF does little to protect aid supplies and workers, and that its troops have been implicated in cases of looting. Read more.

Both sides have denied impeding aid.

The army and the RSF shared power with civilians after a popular uprising in 2019, staged a coup together in 2021, then came to blows over their status in a planned transition towards elections.

U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement last week that the reasons aid was not getting through were "frankly outrageous".

Customs clearances for supplies coming into the country could take up to 18 days, with further inspections under military supervision that could take even longer, he said.

Photo: A volunteer stirring food to be distributed to people in Omdurman, Sudan, September 3, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo

Photo: People hold pots as volunteers distribute food in Omdurman, Sudan, September 3, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo

View original: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/agencies-consider-new-aid-route-into-sudan-humanitarian-crisis-worsens-2024-01-15/

ENDS

In Chad camps, survivors recount Sudan war horrors, many in critical condition physically & psychologically

AFTER surviving atrocities in their homeland Sudan and the perilous journey abroad, the refugees are now confronting the looming threat of famine. The scarcity of water in the camps in Chad has generated tensions that humanitarian organisations have struggled to calm. Read more.

From France24
By Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Dated Saturday, 23 December 2023 - 17:27 - here is a copy in full:

In Chad camps, survivors recount Sudan war horrors

Adré (Chad) (AFP) – Sitting outside her makeshift shelter in eastern Chad, Sudanese refugee Mariam Adam Yaya warmed up tea on some firewood in a bid to quell the pangs of hunger.

Thousands of Sudanese have fled for neighbouring Chad and found refuge in overcrowded camps such as Adre © Denis Sassou Gueipeur / AFP

The 34-year-old from the Masalit ethnic group crossed the border on foot after a four-day trek with no provisions and her eight-year-old son clinging to her back.

She said "heavily armed" men attacked her village, forcing her to flee and leave seven of her children behind amid brutal violence that has sparked fears of ethnic cleansing.

Sudan has since April 15 been plunged into a civil war pitting army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, his former deputy and commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Thousands have fled for neighbouring Chad and found refuge in overcrowded camps such as Adre where Yaya has settled.

In the western Darfur region, paramilitary operations have left civilian victims belonging to the non-Arab Masalit group in what the United Nations and NGOs say is a suspected genocide.

In the West Darfur town of Ardamata alone, armed groups killed more than 1,000 people in November, according to the European Union.

"What we went through in Ardamata is horrifying. The Rapid Support Forces killed elderly people and children indiscriminately," Yaya told AFP.

Trauma

Chad, a country in central Africa that is the world's second least developed according to the United Nations, has hosted the highest number of Sudanese refugees.

The UN says 484,626 people have sheltered there since the fighting broke out, with armed groups forcing more than 8,000 people to flee to Chad in one week.

The United States and other Western nations have accused the RSF and its allies of committing crimes against humanity and acts of ethnic cleansing 

© Denis Sassou Gueipeur / AFP

Formal camps managed by NGOs and informal settlements erected spontaneously have sprouted throughout the border region of Ouaddai.

A traumatised Amira Khamis, 46, said she was targeted due to her Masalit ethnicity and has lost five of her children.

Recovering in an emergency medical structure run by the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) near the Adre camp after shrapnel fractured her feet, she told AFP women and young girls were raped.

"They systematically kill all the people of dark black colour," she said.

Mahamat Nouredine, a 19-year-old who is nursing a fractured arm and has lost four relatives in the violence, said the RSF mercilessly hounded the Masalit community before he escaped to Chad.

"A group of RSF followed us to a hospital and tried to kill everyone... they laid us on the ground in groups of 20 and fired at us," he said.

"Their unspoken goal is to kill people due to their skin colour."

'Critical conditions'

The United States and other Western nations have accused the RSF and its allies of committing crimes against humanity and acts of ethnic cleansing.

An estimate by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project puts the war's death toll at 12,000. Almost seven million people have fled their homes, according to the UN.

After surviving atrocities in their homeland and the perilous journey abroad, the refugees are now confronting the looming threat of famine.

The scarcity of water in the camps has generated tensions that humanitarian organisations have struggled to calm © Denis Sassou Gueipeur / AFP

Yaya said she and her child have "barely" eaten since their arrival in Chad.

The scarcity of water in the camps has generated tensions that humanitarian organisations have struggled to calm.

Gerard Uparpiu, MSF's project coordinator in Adre, said the influx of Sudanese refugees was creating a "worrying" situation.

"We receive them in critical conditions. They are shaken physically and psychologically," he added.

MSF's hospital is surrounded by fencing and constantly monitored by a guard, measures necessitated by the brutality of a conflict that has not spared the wounded.

"They also attacked us when I was being taken to Chad to receive treatment," said Amir Adam Haroun, a Masalit refugee whose leg was broken by an explosive.

View original: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231223-in-chad-camps-survivors-recount-sudan-war-horrors

ENDS 

100 returnees in Unity State head back to transit camps near South Sudan-Sudan border citing hunger

Report from Radio Tamazuj
By Radio Tamazuj
Dated Thursday, 16 November 2023 - here is a copy in full:

100 returnees in Unity State flee back to Sudan citing hunger

Returnees set up makeshift shelters in Renk after fleeing war in Sudan. (Reuters photo)

A hundred South Sudanese who recently returned from Sudan to escape violence are now returning to Sudan due to a worsening humanitarian crisis and hunger in Unity State.

Residents in Unity State reported to Radio Tamazuj that the returnees are heading back to Renk and Thuongor transit camps near the South Sudan-Sudan border and the road leading to the Unity oilfield.

The camp chairman at the UN-run Protection of Civilians site in Bentiu, John Tot Riak, confirmed that some of the returnees had left for Sudan due to the harsh conditions in the camp and state.

“I am aware of the returnees who came to us. When they got us here suffering, they said they could not add to the suffering,” he said. “Some of them have gone back and some are planning to follow those who left.”

The returnees who fled the conflict in Sudan have endured over six months without food aid in Unity State, prompting their decision to leave the Bentiu IDP camp for a country at war.

Nyakume Stephen, a resident of the Bentiu IDP camp, said that the returnees explained that death is the same everywhere.

“They (returnees) said death cannot be divided into two which is why they go back. And we know that death cannot be divided into two,” he stated. “I accommodated sixty returnees. I gave them two rooms which I built because they had no relatives in the block. They left in October. The situation forced them.”

Compounding the problem, Bentiu IDP residents have faced a food aid suspension since July by the World Food Programme (WFP) due to a lack of funding from donors.

According to Tom Ruai, many returnees have gone back to Sudan through Renk County in Upper Nile State and the Unity Oilfield road of Unity State.

“When fighting happened in Khartoum, many people returned home. Now they are being forced by hunger to all go back,” he recounted. “Some of them are dying along the way while footing. Some are using Manga to go back to Renk and Thuongor. Some have gone back to Khartoum. What is facing them is hunger.”

Most returnees in Unity State have voiced concerns about a lack of food, health facilities, clean drinking water, access to education, and a measles outbreak since arriving in the area.

View original: https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/100-returnees-in-unity-state-flee-back-to-sudan-citing-hunger

[Ends]