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The Urgent Need for Peace in Sudan
"Unless there is a lasting ceasefire and peace talks, this conflict threatens not only to destroy Sudan as a functioning state, but it also threatens to destabilize the entire region."
Sep 14, 2024
Last month, the International Rescue Committee, described the crisis in Sudan as the top global humanitarian emergency. On August 28, Lawrence O’Donnell described the war in Sudan as the “least reported humanitarian crisis on the planet”.
Levon Sevunts is a former journalist who works for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. He had recently returned from Chad, a country hosting 633,867 people who have fled Sudan. Sevunts spoke to me, about his trip:
“For me, this was an absolutely surreal experience to be back in Chad almost 20 years to the day after I went to Chad as a Canadian journalist, covering the conflict in Darfur, seeing the same stories, the same refugees, only on a much bigger scale."
Sevunts said,
“The stories I heard from speaking to Sudanese women refugees, who had seen members of their families executed in front of their eyes, of women who told me about worrying about how they’re going to feed their kids, worried every time they went fetching wood beyond the security of the camp that they would get raped or assaulted—worried, but they had to do this anyway because they needed to feed their families.”
Sevunts recalled,
“I was with a journalist in this border town called Adré, a town on the Chadian side of the Sudan border, but it’s right on the border. This is the place where most of the refugees come fleeing from violence. I was speaking with my colleagues about the kind of cases they were seeing, and they were saying there is a big difference now, because in the initial months when the conflict started in mid-April, especially around June when the violence spread in Darfur, they were seeing a lot of people coming in with injuries and gunshot wounds, shrapnel.”
He told me that
“What you are seeing now is that a lot of people are coming in extremely malnourished. This is basically a man-made food crisis. Because of the war, farmers are not able to plant in their fields; they have missed one planting season already, their crops were burned, and their livestock was destroyed or taken away from them. So you have this incredible humanitarian situation inside Sudan, but it’s also playing out on the Chadian side of the border because before the war, this part of Chad used to get most of its food imports from Sudan, and now it’s vice versa. So now they have to truck food all the way from Libya because the area doesn’t provide enough food for the population. Food is trucked all the way through the Sahara desert, all the way from Libya, south to Chad, and from Chad, some of it goes to Sudan. And this means that prices have jumped. So not only do humanitarian agencies have to buy items from local markets, but the prices of things at the market have gone up because of the logistical difficulties that the war has created."
Sevunts explained that it’s not just the refugees; it’s the local population who are worried about putting food on the table for their own families.
Sevunts noted that many displaced people, “have been displaced time and again. They flee to one city or region that they think is safe, and then a couple of months later, war spreads to that region, and they have to flee again and again.” He called on the international community to step steps in with immediate humanitarian assistance.
He also noted that, “humanitarian aid is just a band-aid solution” and said that, “what they really need is peace in Sudan. Because unless there is a lasting ceasefire and peace talks, this conflict threatens not only to destroy Sudan as a functioning state, but it also threatens to destabilize the entire region, a very, very fragile part of East and Central Africa.”
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WHO Chief Warns of 'Perfect Storm of Crises' in Sudan as World Turns Its Back
"The international community has seemingly forgotten about Sudan, and is paying little heed to the conflict tearing it apart."
Sep 09, 2024
The head of the World Health Organization on Sunday warned of a devastating set of crises in war-torn Sudan and called for a stronger international response.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, a United Nations agency, delivered remarks from the city of Port Sudan following visits to health facilities in the country, which is locked in civil war and faces the prospect of a large-scale famine.
"I was shaken by the state of many of the tiny, wasted children," Ghebreyesus said.
"The scale of the emergency is shocking, as is the insufficient action being taken to curtail the conflict, and respond to the suffering it is causing," he added.
Ghebreyesus said he'd come to Sudan to draw attention to the dire situation there.
"The international community has seemingly forgotten about Sudan, and is paying little heed to the conflict tearing it apart, with repercussions in the region," he said.
#Sudan’s health system is on the verge of collapse after 16 months of war, with over 25M people in dire need of aid. “The scale of the emergency is shocking,” warns WHO chief @DrTedros. The world must wake up and act now to prevent further catastrophe.https://t.co/uuebggGhMG
— Africa Renewal, UN (@africarenewal) September 9, 2024
The two main parties in the civil war are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the country's official military, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group. The two groups shared power for two years before the civil war erupted in April 2023.
The war's death toll is above 20,000, and that's an underestimate, Ghebreyesus said. Both sides have been accused of atrocities and of obstructing international aid. Parts of Sudan are facing famine and others are at risk of it; overall, 25.6 million Sudanese are expected to face high levels of food insecurity, Ghebreyesus warned.
A report issued last week by U.N. agencies and partner groups found that as of August, 8.5 million Sudanese faced "Emergency" conditions of food insecurity, the second-highest level, while 750,000 faced "Catastrophe/Famine," the highest level.
Last week, three international humanitarian groups warned that Sudan faced a hunger crisis of "historic proportions."
Dire warnings have been issued for many months but the international community has been slow to act. At a conference in Paris in April, rich countries did pledge $2.1 billion in support for Sudan, a bit less than the $2.7 billion the U.N. had sought; in any case, only $1.1 billion has actually been received in Sudan, as of the end of August.
Sudan faces the world's worst displacement crisis, with more than 10 million people having been forced to move within the country, and 2 million having left its borders, according to data cited by Ghebreyesus.
Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian public health official who's led the WHO since 2017, said he felt a close affinity with Sudan—it's "like my home," he said—and was deeply saddened by the situation there. He described the following "perfect storm of crises":
- over 500 days of conflict;
- the largest level of displacement in the world;
- famine in some parts, and risk of this in others;
- disasters including flooding leading to dams bursting;
- disease outbreaks, including cholera, malaria, dengue, and measles, with the risk of mpox;
- multiple reported incidents of conflict-related sexual violence; and
- the near collapse of much of the country's health system.
One of the most conflict-stricken areas of the country is Darfur, which became a cause célèbre during a war in the 2000s but hasn't received the same level of international attention this time.
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UN Expert Fears 'Almost the Entire Population' of Gaza Exterminated If Israel Not Stopped
"The range of presumable direct and indirect deaths could be between 15 and 20% of the population already by the end of this year," said U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.
Sep 06, 2024
Reviewing a global public health expert's analysis of the probable ultimate death toll in Gaza from Israel's relentless assault, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories said Friday that without a cease-fire, the Israel Defense Forces "could end up exterminating almost the entire population in Gaza over the next couple of years."
"The range of presumable direct and indirect deaths could be between 15% and 20% of the population already by the end of this year," said Francesca Albanese, citing research by Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh.
Sridhar wrote in The Guardian about the difficulty of counting the dead on Thursday, days after the first of three planned pauses in fighting began to allow families to get to medical clinics for polio vaccines. Israel agreed to the pauses after one child was diagnosed with paralysis resulting from polio, which was detected in wastewater in Gaza in July, alarming public health experts.
"The discovery of polio in Gaza reminds us that it's becoming increasingly difficult to assess the true cost of the war," wrote Sridhar. "We don't have a sense of how widespread disease and starvation are—so-called 'indirect deaths'—and we are in the dark in terms of total number of deaths. Usually, data is collected from hospitals and morgues, which certify each death and notify the health ministry. Yet these civil registration systems have broken down in Gaza, meaning there is no accurate data on how many deaths have occurred."
As Common Dreamsreported on Wednesday, despite Israel's agreement to pauses in fighting to allow children to be vaccinated, bombings by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continued this week, with some targeting "locations near the vaccination centers."
Human rights advocates have said since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza last October that along with the threat of bombings and shelling, Palestinians face the ever-growing threat of starvation and disease due to Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid.
"If deaths continue at this rate—about 23,000 a month—there would be an additional 149,500 deaths by the end of the year, some six and half months from the initial mid-June estimate. Using the method, the total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total."
In its regular report on the humanitarian situation in Gaza on Friday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Israeli evacuation orders in addition to blockades caused daily meals provided to families to drop 35% in July and August.
"The food security situation in the Gaza Strip is deteriorating due to the critical shortages of aid commodities as well as ongoing hostilities, insecurity, damaged roads, access limitation and breakdown of law and order," said the agency, noting that more than 1 million people in southern and central Gaza received no food rations in August.
United Nations experts warned in July that Israel's "targeted starvation campaign" has "resulted in famine across all of Gaza," with at least 34 Palestinians dying of malnutrition as hundreds of aid delivery trucks were stranded in Egypt, unable to cross into the enclave.
The spread of disease is also a continued threat due to "the staggering increase in the cost of basic hygiene items" and attacks on health centers, said OCHA on Friday. The price of soap increased 1,177% in July, compared to July 2023.
"The lack of affordable hygiene items, combined with limited access to clean water and sanitation facilities, poses a growing risk of severe health impacts," said the agency. "This is especially true for families who have been displaced, as they face extreme difficulties maintaining basic hygiene in overcrowded shelters and displacement sites, while critical facilities—such as health centers, community kitchens, child-protection spaces, nutrition centers, and schools—lack the necessary tools to ensure safe and sanitary conditions. These conditions are all likely to deteriorate further during the winter."
Sridhar noted that while at least 40,878 people are confirmed dead in Gaza, "it is estimated that there are more than 10,000 bodies buried under rubble still (meaning they can't be counted), as well as a rising number of unidentifiable bodies."
Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
Sridhar's report came two months after public health experts estimated in The Lancet that even if a cease-fire were agreed to immediately, the true death toll in Gaza could ultimately reach roughly 186,000—nearly 8% of the population.
"If deaths continue at this rate—about 23,000 a month—there would be an additional 149,500 deaths by the end of the year, some six and half months from the initial mid-June estimate," wrote Sridhar. "Using the method, the total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total."
Sridhar urged advocates to not "get lost in these numbers and forget the name and the face behind each one," and to continue pushing for a cease-fire and public health measures like the polio vaccination campaign that could save thousands of children from paralysis.
"Attempts to access the strip by the U.N., like the one resulting in humanitarian pauses for polio vaccinations, save lives," wrote Sridhar. "They make a difference to hundreds of thousands of families, even within the abject horror of war."
Albanese suggested that eventually, the world will have to face the potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths that powerful countries including the United States—the largest funder of Israel's military—allowed to happen.
"Once the dust settles, I can't imagine how the world will go on after having allowed that," said Albanese. "Again."
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