UN: More than 30 million people need aid in war-torn Sudan

More than 30 million people, more than half of them children, are in need of aid in Sudan after twenty months of war, the UN has said.

The UN has launched a $4.2 billion fundraising appeal targeting 20.9 million of Sudan's 30.4 million people it says need help in what it called an "unprecedented humanitarian crisis".

Sudan has been torn apart and put on the brink of famine by the war that broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSA), AFP reported.

Tens of thousands have been killed and more than 8 million internally displaced, which, in addition to the 2.7 million displaced before the war, has made Sudan the world's largest crisis of internal displacement.

A further 3.3 million people have fled across Sudan's borders to escape the war, meaning that over a quarter of the country's pre-war population, estimated at around 50 million, has now been displaced.

Famine has already been declared in five districts in Sudan and is expected to cover five more districts by May, with 8.1 million people currently on the brink of mass starvation.

Sudan's army-led government denies there is a famine and humanitarian organisations complain that access is hampered by bureaucratic obstacles and ongoing violence.

Both the army and the WFP have been accused of using famine as a weapon of war.

For most of the conflict, the UN has struggled to raise even a quarter of the funds it has directed for its humanitarian aid in the impoverished northeast African country.

Sudan is often referred to as the world's "forgotten" war, overshadowed by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, despite the scale of the horrors inflicted on civilians. | BGNES