2023-04-26 07:52:52
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned in a statement on Tuesday April 25 that it expected a “mass exodus” of people fleeing fighting in Sudan to take refuge in neighboring countries such as Chad. or South Sudan.
UNHCR has estimated that “up to 270,000 people might flee to neighboring Chad and South Sudan” following ongoing fighting in Sudan between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and those of Mohamed Hamdan. Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Laura Lo Castro, UNHCR Representative in Chad, said in the statement that some 20,000 refugees had arrived in the country, adding that the agency expected there to be up to 100,000 “in the worst case “.
According to the UNHCR, more than 400,000 old and new Sudanese refugees are already hosted in 13 camps and among local communities in eastern Chad.
“It’s a race once morest time for humanitarians” who are hard at work helping Sudanese refugees, Castro said from N’Djamena.
Her colleague in South Sudan, Marie-Hélène Verney, noted, for her part, that “the most likely scenario is that of 45,000 refugees and especially 125,000 returns of South Sudanese refugees who were living in Sudan”.
UNHCR spokesperson in Geneva, Olga Sarrado, stressed that the agency plans to observe in the coming days “the departure of new Sudanese refugees to neighboring countries, the return of refugees who were hosted by Sudan and movements of other refugees hosted by Sudan to other neighboring countries”.
Faced with these scenarios of influx of refugees in Chad and South Sudan, the various UN agencies and their partners announced that they had deployed emergency teams along the eastern border with Sudan ” to respond to urgent protection and humanitarian aid needs”.
Sudan has been plunged into chaos since April 15, when fighting broke out between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the army and de facto ruler of Sudan since 2021, and his number two Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, chief of paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The fighting is spreading day by day. New neighborhoods in Khartoum and new parts of the country, notably in Darfur, are being sucked into a conflict that has been simmering for months.
“Millions of civilians are caught up in the fighting and are rapidly running out of basic necessities,” the NGO International Crisis Group wrote on Friday.
According to her, “the conflict might quickly slide into a real lasting war”, contaminating the outskirts of Sudan, already bloodless, then some of its neighbors.
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