More than 2,000 people have died in the two-month battle between the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitary forces of General Mohamed Hamdan Daghlo’s Rapid Support Forces (FSR), according to the NGO Oglet. More than 2.5 million have been forced to flee to Sudan or elsewhere abroad.
“This crisis will require sustained financial support and I am confident that we can all keep Sudan at the top of our priorities,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said after a donor conference in Geneva on Monday.
Peace on the pitch
According to figures provided by the UN, the United States tops the pledges with $550 million, while France has pledged $44.77 million. Germany, a co-organizer of the conference like the European Union, Qatar, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, has committed to pay 200 million euros by 2024, Qatar 50 million dollars and the European Union 190 million euros.
The conference was held halfway through a three-day ceasefire in Sudan that appears to have restored peace in Khartoum. On the ground, airstrikes and artillery fire have stopped since Sunday morning in Sudan’s capital, where millions of people are surviving under extreme heat.
Several residents interviewed by AFP said they had heard no fighting in the city on Monday, the second day of a 72-hour ceasefire set to end at 6:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday. The warlords have promised to allow humanitarian aid through the East African nation, one of the world’s poorest, after more than a dozen cease-fires were formally violated.
“Continuous Violations” of the Ceasefire
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Monday condemned the “disrespect for the force”, saying that the “transfer of wounded soldiers” from the army, in the hands of paramilitary forces, had failed due to “gunfire”. The army and the FSR accused each other of violating the ceasefire.
On Monday, General Taklo condemned “continuous violations” of the ceasefire by the army, instead accusing the FSR of “breaking the ceasefire” and “leaving 15 dead and dozens of civilians injured, in Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan, where the conflict is particularly violent.”
UN chief Antonio Guterres said Sudan was sinking into a spiral of death and destruction at an “unprecedented pace”. According to him, if the international community withdraws from it, it will soon become a place of anarchy, causing insecurity across the region.
Mediation
The arrival of the rainy season has raised fears of an epidemic, the ICRC said on Monday, describing piles of debris and corpses lying in the open in areas still inaccessible. Out of desperation, he points out, many residents are forced to drink unsafe water from the Nile or other sources.
The Red Cross, UN agencies and other non-governmental organizations should help Sudan’s neighboring countries, which are mired in economic crisis or in the grip of violence, welcome refugees.
For weeks, Saudi Arabia and the United States acted as mediators between the two camps. They obtained short cease-fires but did not open negotiations on a plan to end the crisis.
At Monday’s conference, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdelrahman al-Thani praised the mediation effort, as did the African Union and IACD, the East African bloc to which Sudan belongs. “There is no solution but a political one,” he insisted, adding that Sudan had rejected the IGAD Quartet outright.
A “catastrophe” was declared in Darfur
The situation is particularly alarming in Darfur, where soldiers, paramilitaries, tribal militias and armed civilians are clashing. In the past four days, “15,000 Sudanese, nearly 900 injured,” fled large-scale violence against civilians in West Darfur’s capital, El-Jeneina, and sought refuge in Adrey, Chad, medics said. ) According to the UN, more than 150,000 people have fled Darfur to Chad.
In Darfur, “the conflict now has an ethnic dimension”, the UN, African Union and ICAO warned in a joint statement, “with targeted attacks based on people’s identity and population migration”.
Darfur, already ravaged in the 2000s by a war that has killed around 300,000 people and displaced nearly 2.5 million, is heading for a new “humanitarian catastrophe”, according to the United Nations, which the UN calls “crimes against humanity”. warned.
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