Sir, – One hundred days ago conflict erupted in Sudan. Since then the violence has escalated and spread across most of country. Sudan was a country with huge humanitarian needs. It is now moving rapidly to being a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe.
More than half the population – 24.7 million people – need humanitarian assistance. This includes over three million children estimated to be acutely malnourished, 621,000 of whom face severe acute malnutrition. Some 3.3 million have been forced to leave their homes, with over 750,000 fleeing to neighbouring countries.
The Concern teams in Sudan and neighbouring Chad and South Sudan have been told stories by people who have witnessed loved ones shot dead, mothers who have become separated from children in the scramble to escape, and tens of thousands of people arriving in camps with literally just the clothes on their backs.
The vast majority of refugees are women and children. For those who have managed to reach the refugee camps in Chad and South Sudan Concern is providing basic materials for shelter and survival, emergency nutritional support for severely malnourished children and mobile health clinics.
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‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
However, the health and nutrition work of our teams in Sudan is severely curtailed by the lack of safe passage for people or supplies.
This has devastating consequences. In 2022, Concern was supporting over 200,000 malnourished children in Sudan. Many of those cannot be reached at present.
The scale of the humanitarian catastrophe which has emerged in just 100 days in Sudan needs to be recognised, along with the risk that it poses for stability of neighbouring countries.
The international community cannot be passive onlookers but must work for peace and protect the vulnerable. The current international call for $2.6 billion to provide life-saving assistance to over 18 million people in Sudan is just 22 per cent funded. – Yours, etc,
DAVID REGAN,
Chief Executive,
Concern Worldwide,
Dublin 2.