The meeting comes as fighting between rival Sudanese armies, which has been ongoing since April 2023, has displaced nearly 10 million people from their homes, half of them children.
Joyce Masua, a top official at the UN disaster relief coordination agency OCHA, said the Sudanese people had endured 17 months of hellish conditions and their suffering was increasing.
“Thousands of civilians have died, entire communities have been displaced and deprived of food, families have been destroyed, children have been deeply traumatized,” said OCHA Acting Under-Secretary-General and Disaster Relief Coordinator Joyce Masua, “Women have been raped. And Otherwise it is abused.”
“There is an urgent need for decisive international action. We need human access to reach every person in need in every possible way. At the same time, strong and inclusive steps must be taken to ensure the safety of civilians and to strengthen the resolve to end this destructive war.”
hard diplomacy
The violence has not stopped despite repeated warnings from UN humanitarian agencies and appeals to the Security Council to end the fighting. However, US-led talks in Switzerland in August with mediators from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates revealed a commitment to increase humanitarian aid supplies from neighboring Chad.
According to the UN’s humanitarian aid agency, the disaster has now become the world’s worst hunger crisis. The agencies also warn that an estimated 25 million people across Sudan are already at the point of starvation.
Joyce Mosua, Under-Secretary-General of OCHA, told a ministerial meeting to consider the situation in Sudan at UN headquarters in New York that despite heroic efforts by local and international humanitarian agencies, it was difficult to deliver adequate aid.
He called on member states to decide that there would be no need to hold similar meetings within the next year amid death, destruction and unbearable suffering.
“Today, let us all resolve to take decisive action to protect the lives of ordinary people in Sudan.”
Warning about the death toll
The World Food Program (WFP) said in Geneva on Tuesday that millions of people could die if humanitarian aid does not reach Sudan immediately.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Aid (OCHA) and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have emphasized that famine is confirmed in the Zamzam camp in North Darfur, but many other areas are also at risk.
Recent estimates show that approximately 5 million children and pregnant and lactating women suffer from severe malnutrition.