War-torn Sudan faces 'catastrophe' as UN runs out of funds

Of nearly 25 million people in need, the United Nations has only been able to reach a fraction, according to the head of the UN’s humanitarian response in war-torn Sudan.

But assistance to even those four million could soon stop, Clementine Nkweta-Salami told AFP in an interview, if the chronic lack of funding continues.

The UN’s humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan says eight months into a conflict between rival generals that has torn the country apart, the situation is “catastrophic”.

Aid workers have called it the “forgotten war”.

On April 15, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, turned their weapons on each other.

Two years after the former allies co-engineered a 2021 coup sidelining civilians from power, their forces have killed more than 12,190 people in their brutal struggle for power, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).

That figure is only a conservative estimate, however, with entire parts of the country completely cut off from the world.

There are also “seven million people displaced in Sudan, which is the highest displacement situation globally,” Nkweta-Salami said.

Yet despite the scale of the crisis, the humanitarian response remains woefully underfunded.

“We’ve received only 38.6 percent” of the total $2.6 billion needed for 2023, Nkweta-Salami said.

“There will come a time when even if we have (physical) access, we will not have the resources to enable us to channel the relevant assistance that we need to do,” she warned.