2024-01-16 23:06:18
“Civilians are the only ones who suffer,” a Sudanese man who has been displaced several times tells the NGO. In April, a bloody power struggle broke out in the capital Khartoum between the troops of military ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of his former deputy Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti. Actually, RSF should have been subordinated to the army and power in the country should have been transferred back to a civilian government. Instead, the fighting spread to several regions in the spring of 2023. It is estimated that more than 12,000 people were killed.
“The situation became unbearable,” recalls a woman who fled the city of Omdurman – which is located next to the capital Khartoum – at the beginning of the fighting. Like many others, she and her children fled from the state of al-Khartoum to the neighboring state of al-Jazeera. Medical care on site was inadequate. The situation has become particularly precarious since the provincial capital Wad Madani was captured by the RSF militias last month.
Archyde.com/El Tayeb Siddig The fighting in Khartoum set off a large movement of refugees in mid-April
UN office: Millions of people on the run
Within a month, more than 600,000 people were newly displaced, especially in the state of al-Jazeera, the UN Emergency Relief Office (OCHA) reported on Sunday. In the past nine months, a total of more than 7.4 million people were displaced or fled abroad. Before the start of the war, the number of inhabitants was estimated at around 48 million people.
“My family and I are originally from Darfur, but because of the violent clashes and crisis there, we moved to Khartoum, where we became internally displaced. But the war followed us to Khartoum, so we went to Wad Madani. And so the story continues,” said a father from the NGO MSF. When clashes broke out in Wad Madani in mid-December, the family fled once more. “I thought to myself: Where should we go now?”
Concerns regarding fighting in key crop area
The new fighting areas in central and eastern areas are where most food is grown, according to OCHA. This makes the supply situation even more difficult. The need for humanitarian aid continues to increase. However, distribution is difficult due to the security situation, looting, bureaucratic hurdles, poor telephone connections and lack of money. The need to support almost 15 million people this year is around 2.7 billion dollars (around 2.5 billion euros). Of these, 3.1 percent have been received so far.
Rick Brennan, regional emergency director of the World Health Organization (WHO), spoke of a “very difficult working environment” at a press conference in Cairo on Monday. To make matters worse, there have recently been outbreaks of diseases such as cholera, measles, polio, dengue fever and malaria in the country.
Warning of “generational catastrophe”
Escalation of violence in Darfur
The situation in the western Darfur provinces is particularly devastating – one of the country’s most serious conflicts has been raging in Darfur for over 20 years. The conflicts that had been simmering for years between ethnic minorities such as the Masalit and the RSF militias of Arab origin escalated once more due to the power struggle.
Die Miliz Rapid Support Forces (RSF) emerged from cavalry militias in the Darfur region notorious for human rights crimes. RSF is accused of looting, mass killings, rape and ethnic cleansing.
Reports from Sudanese refugees in Chad painted a picture of an “unbearable spiral of violence with looting, burning houses, beatings, sexual violence and massacres,” MSF reported in a recent broadcast.
High mortality in refugee camps
The results of the survey, carried out last year by Médecins Sans Frontières Epicentre’s medical research and epidemiology center, show a significant increase in mortality since the start of the conflict in Sudan in April 2023 in the three refugee camps where the study was carried out. The refugees housed in the Ourang camp are the most affected. The mortality rate here has increased twenty-fold since April 2023 and has reached 2.25 deaths per 10,000 inhabitants per day. 83 percent of those killed were men.
The ethnic dimension of violence, rooted in political, economic and rural rivalries between communities living in the territory, had taken a particular turn in West Darfur’s capital, al-Junaina. “Today there are virtually no Masalites living there anymore,” says MSF.
According to the aid organization, one of the most recent outbreaks of violence occurred in November in Ardamatta, northeast of Al-Junaina. Hundreds of people were reportedly killed as militias took control of the area, which was home to a large camp for displaced people and a Sudanese armed forces garrison.
Hardly any prospect of peace
The prospect of peace between the troops of de facto head of state al-Burhan and the RSF militias seems distant. On Tuesday, Sudan’s Foreign Ministry announced it would end its involvement in mediation efforts with the regional African organization IGAD. IGAD had previously put Sudan on the agenda of a meeting to which RSF leader Dagalo was invited. Dagalo recently met several African heads of state, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Kenyan President William Ruto.
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