A Sudan donor conference will meet in Paris on Monday. Millions of people are threatened by war and rely on humanitarian aid. But neither the government nor the rebels are thinking of easing the suffering with a ceasefire.
Mathias Mogge, Secretary General of Welthungerhilfe, was just in Sudan and will be a guest at the Paris donor conference on Monday. He reports that he arrived in Port Sudan, one of the last reasonably safe places in Sudan. There he visited a camp for internally displaced people.
That was in a former vocational school that was half finished. 2,000 people are housed there, living under catastrophic conditions. “We tried to improve the drinking water supply, especially the sewage situation. You have to imagine that the people there were really standing in their sewage.”
Military people don’t care about the suffering
These are catastrophic conditions, but it is still better for people than fighting for survival in the middle of a war zone. According to the UN refugee agency, 8.5 million people are fleeing the war between the two militaries, which do not care about the suffering of the population in their power struggle.
Together, Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, who effectively runs the Sudanese military, and Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemeti, head of the Rapid Support Forces, a notorious fighting force, ended Sudan’s burgeoning democracy in 2021. Then a year ago the silence between the two autocratic militaries ended.
World hunger Help: Situation is getting worse
The consequences are dramatic. “18 million people in Sudan alone are dependent on humanitarian aid. Five million people, including four million children under the age of five, are at acute risk of hunger – actually starvation,” says Mogge. Food prices have risen by up to eighty percent.
The Secretary General of Welthungerhilfe expects the situation to get worse in the coming weeks and months: “We are now entering the time when prices normally rise anyway because the growing season begins now, but the harvest will not be harvested until September.” During this time, prices would generally go up. “People are starving anyway, and now the war is making that even more so.”
Russia and Iran supply weapons
Sudan needs aid money. More than a hundred million euros are still needed to bring a regional aid plan to life, and what is missing is peace. “Above all, we need improved access to people in need,” says Mogge. The Sudanese government, but also the rebels, would make it extremely difficult for Welthungerhilfe to be able to help at all. “That’s why we keep calling for improved access.”
This will not happen without pressure from outside. The interests are confused. Russia supplies weapons, and Iran obviously does too. The army at least uses Iranian drones. An Iranian Boeing 747 cargo plane is currently scheduled to land regularly at Port Sudan airport. This is reported by the Dutch peace organization Pax. Sudan is also torn apart in a kind of proxy war.
Udo Schmidt, ARD Cairo, tagesschau, April 12, 2024 9:08 p.m