The United Nations has called on countries not to forget the entrapped civilians in the conflict regions of Sudan as the war continues.
The call for more aids as millions of people have been displaced both inside and outside of Sudan during the ten-month conflict between the country’s armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The conflict has also destroyed the nation’s infrastructure and sparked famine predictions.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) launched a joint appeal with the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) to raise $2.7 billion in financing to deliver humanitarian aid for 14.7 million people.
Around 25 million people, or half of Sudan’s population, are in need of humanitarian aid and protection, and the United Nations reports that over 1.5 million have fled to South Sudan, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, and Ethiopia.
“Sudan keeps getting forgotten by the international community,” U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths said to diplomats during a United Nations meeting at its headquarters in Geneva.
“There is a certain kind of obscenity about the humanitarian world, which is the competition of suffering, a competition between places: ‘I have more suffering than you, so I need to get more attention, so I need to get more money.'”
As part of the appeal, the U.N. refugee agency requested $1.4 billion to sustain around 2.7 million refugees in five neighboring countries of Sudan.
Griffiths explained to reporters that the opposing factions had been invited to Geneva to talk about the availability of relief for civilians.
Although the sides had reached a basic understanding, he noted that the specifics of any meeting still needed to be worked out.
Less than half of OCHA’s application for funding to help civilians in Sudan last year was funded. The aid chief stated that there was a greater need for the international community to respond.
“We must not forget Sudan,” he added. “That’s the simple message that I have to say today.”