When this April 15 marks one year since the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan - between the regular army, powerful paramilitary forces (the Rapid Support Forces) and militias related to each side - the country is experiencing one of the crises humanitarian crisis that is unfolding the fastest in the world. However, aid continues to arrive in dribs and drabs due to the obstacles of the opposing parties, which have increased in recent months and are preventing a response that can cover the great needs of the population, according to several humanitarian agencies.
Currently, an estimated 25 million people, representing more than half of Sudan and including more than 14 million children, are in urgent need of assistance. The country is also suffering from one of the largest food crises on the planet: at least 18 million Sudanese face acute levels of hunger, deaths from starvation have begun to be recorded, and the declaration of a famine is considered only a matter of time. The war has caused the largest internally displaced persons crisis in the world, with 6.5 million people forced to seek more stable places within the country, adding to the two million who have taken refuge outside. And the conflict has devastated much of the national critical infrastructure and overwhelmed those that are still standing, including hospitals. Around 65% of people do not have access to health care.
Some 18 million Sudanese face acute levels of hunger and the declaration of a famine is considered only a matter of time
Despite the magnitude of the crisis, the humanitarian response is limited by a lack of funding, as the international community has so far only funded around 6% of the UN response plan. And the little help that arrives is limited by criminal actions and obstacles imposed by the warring parties. These include the lack of security guarantees, massive looting, bureaucratic and logistical obstacles, and attempts to instrumentalize aid, which are particularly punishing the areas hardest hit by the war, including the capital, Khartoum, and the regions of Darfur, in the west, Kordofan in the south, and Al Jazira in the center. In an attempt to draw attention to these efforts, Paris will host an international humanitarian conference on Sudan and neighboring countries this Monday.
At first, the activity of the main humanitarian agencies in Sudan was disrupted because fighting broke out in Khartoum – which has also been looted by the paramilitaries – which forced them to temporarily suspend operations, evacuate some of the workers and reassess the situation. Many agencies began to reactivate after moving their base of operations to Port Sudan, a city on the Red Sea and under the control of the army that today acts as a temporary administrative capital. Since then they have had to deal with generalized insecurity, mainly in areas under the control of the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces, and with constant and growing bureaucratic and logistical obstacles, especially from the military authorities. These include limits on ports of access to the country and lengthy processes to authorize the sending, receiving and distribution of supplies, as well as issuing visas.
Furthermore, humanitarian operations have been further restricted and controlled by the military Government since the end of last year. Although the reasons are not clear, the change coincided with the last major military setback of the army, which in December collapsed in Al Jazira before the paramilitaries, and the reception of the leader of the latter, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, by several African capitals.
From that moment on, efforts to send aid from areas controlled by the army, including Port Sudan, to areas outside its control, and especially with the presence of paramilitaries, such as Darfur, Khartoum, Kordofan and Al Jazira, were seen interrupted. And at the end of February, the Sudanese Government announced the interruption of an important humanitarian corridor between Chad and West Darfur, hiding behind the shipment of weapons to the Rapid Support Forces across this border, which is beyond its control.
“This is not about helping the areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, but rather the people there, who are most at risk of famine,” says Mathilde Vu, the Norwegian Council's advocacy director for Sudan. for Refugees. “They tend to be the ones who have suffered the most in terms of atrocities, and the ones who have been the most isolated from humanitarian aid since the start of the war,” she notes.
The United States and the European Union denounced the army's decision to prohibit cross-border humanitarian aid and criticized its obstacles to aid reaching communities in areas controlled by the paramilitaries, whom they criticized for looting homes, markets and warehouses. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also soon warned that the apparently deliberate denial of safe and unhindered access to humanitarian agencies inside Sudan violates international law and may amount to a crime of war.
“The Government of Sudan is deliberately hindering access to areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces,” says Helena Cardellach, the emergency coordinator for Sudan for Doctors Without Borders (MSF). “When they don't give you permission to move to Khartoum, Al Jazira or other areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, what they are trying to do is for the aid to stay in the areas they control, which goes against international law. humanitarian,” he slides.
Route opening threat
Responding to pressure, in early March the Sudanese government informed the UN that it would allow cross-border aid from Chad to the capital of North Darfur, El Fasher, and from South Sudan to the city of Kosti, south of Khartoum. He also announced that he would open a land route through the north of the country to send aid from Port Sudan to El Fasher, and that he would approve the use of the airports in El Fasher and the capitals of two other states in the center and south of the country. However, the access and reception points are all located in territory controlled by the army, and Port Sudan is located about 2,000 kilometers from El Fasher. Until now, in addition, the procedures for using the new routes have not been defined either, as reported at the end of March by the director of operations of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA, for its acronym in English), Edem Wosurnu.
“Now we have much less access [to operate] than six months ago, both from Port Sudan and from Chad,” Vu points out. “And most of the pockets of people at risk of famine are in Darfur and obviously also in Khartoum and to some extent in Kordofan. “These areas remain isolated in many ways,” he warns.
These obstacles to the distribution of supplies threaten to further aggravate the crisis. Cardellach, for example, explains that MSF is taking advantage of the
stocks
they had in now isolated places, such as Khartoum and Al Jazira, to continue operating and supporting health centers. But he advances that “there will come a time when they will run out.”
We now have much less access [to operate] than six months ago, both from Port Sudan and from Chad
Mathilde Vu, Advocacy Director for Sudan at the Norwegian Refugee Council
At the end of March, the UN World Food Program (WFP) was able to send the first shipment of food in months from Chad to Western and Central Darfur, but regretted that they did not know when they would be able to make another similar shipment. The same agency transported additional supplies to North Darfur from Chad and Port Sudan a few days later, in the first cross-frontal delivery of assistance in six months.
Emergency aid coordination has also recently been affected by widespread and recurring internet and phone blackouts in many areas of Sudan since early February. These have been widely attributed to an action by paramilitaries in Khartoum, in retaliation for the blackouts ordered by the army at the end of last year in Darfur, their traditional fiefdom. The interruptions have mainly impacted local initiatives that are at the forefront of distributing aid and organizing essential services in isolated areas. An important part of these efforts are led by the so-called emergency response units; volunteer groups, very well rooted at the local level, that emerged from civil society, and groups of revolutionaries that already existed before the war and that have now oriented their efforts to the distribution of aid and the organization of services. In many cases, these groups operate in places where humanitarian agencies do not reach, as highlighted by Wosurnu, from OCHA, who assured, in his March appearance before the UN Security Council, that since October they have not been able to cross conflict lines to send aid to parts of Khartoum outside the army's control.
A spokesperson for one of these units in eastern Khartoum explains by text message that the internet blackouts have “hugely” affected their community kitchens, where thousands of families go, because they depend on funds they receive from transfers made with applications especially from the Sudanese diaspora abroad. In their case, the blackouts led to more than 100 community kitchens to stop working.