As the vicious war in Sudan between the national army\u2014Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the formidable paramilitary forces \u2018Rapid Support Forces\u2019 (RSF) rages nationwide intensely risking spurring the world\u2019s largest hunger crisis, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strategizes to brief the UN Security Council on measures to impose targeted sanctions against individuals believed to be obstructing aid access to the conflict-affected people in Darfur region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Akshaya Kumar, crisis advocacy director at Human Rights Watch says the council has just broke months of silence by adopting a resolution on Sudan last week and should build on that momentum by imposing consequences on those responsible for preventing aid from getting to people who need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The alert will be sent to the Council as a so-called \u201cwhite note,\u201d drafted by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in accordance with its mandate under Security Council Resolution 2417 to ring the alarm about \u201cthe risk of conflict-induced famine and wide-spread food insecurity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OCHA\u2019s alert follows warnings by international aid experts, Sudanese civil society leaders, and Sudanese emergency responders, and that people across Sudan are dying of hunger. It also comes on the heels of Sudan\u2019s Armed Forces (SAF) brazenly escalating its efforts to restrict the movement of humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a 2023 presidential statement, the Security Council reiterated its \u201cstrong intention to give its full attention\u201d to information provided by the secretary-general when it is alerted to situations involving conflict-induced food insecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe council should honor that commitment and convene an open meeting to discuss OCHA\u2019s findings. That could pave the way for decisive action, including sanctions on individuals responsible for obstructing aid delivery,\u201d Human Rights Watch said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since conflict broke out between Sudan\u2019s Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023, both warring parties have restricted aid delivery, access, and distribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ninety percent of people in Sudan facing emergency levels of hunger are in areas that are \u201clargely inaccessible\u201d to the World Food Programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCommunities (in Sudan) are on the brink of famine because we are prevented from reaching many of the children, women and families in need,\u201d according to UNICEF Executive Director, Catherine Russell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In February, Sudan\u2019s military leader, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said the authorities would no longer allow aid to reach areas under RSF control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aid organizations have repeatedly said that the SAF is obstructing their delivery of aid to RSF-controlled areas. Aid groups face a maze of bureaucratic impediments, including delays, arbitrary restrictions on movement, harassment, and outright bans on some supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On March 4, Sudan\u2019s foreign affairs minister, added to the restrictions announcing that the government opposed cross-border aid delivery from Chad to areas under RSF control. On March 6, Sudanese authorities informed, the UN that they would allow limited cross-border movement exclusively through specific crossings under the control of forces allied to the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sudanese authorities have also blocked cross-line aid movement to RSF-controlled territory, which has put Khartoum under a de facto aid blockade since November 2023 at least, aid groups told Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The UN welcomed the Sudanese authorities\u2019 announcement identifying aid crossings. The medical charity, Doctors Without Borders, however, raised concerns that this would leave \u201cvast areas in Darfur, Kordofan, Khartoum, and Jazeera states still inaccessible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aid operations have also been choked by limited funding. As of the end of February, the UN’s appeal was 5 percent funded. That gap is exacerbated by widespread looting of warehouse including a December 2023 incident in which Rapid Support Forces fighters looted stocks in a World Food Programme warehouse in Wad Madani that would have been used to feed 1.5 million hungry people and attack an MSF compound, forcing the organization to evacuate its team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been widespread attacks on aid workers, including the International Committee of the Red Cross including killings, injuries, and detentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Security Council\u2019s latest resolution 2724 on Sudan calls \u201con all parties to ensure the removal of any obstructions to the delivery of aid and to enable full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access, including cross-border and cross-line, and to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that \u201cthe apparently deliberate denial of safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian agencies within Sudan itself constitutes a serious violation of international law, and may amount to a war crime.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Security Council\u2019s Sudan Sanctions Committee met in February, announcing that it \u201cwishes to remind the parties that those who commit violations of international humanitarian law and other atrocities may be subject to targeted sanctions measures in accordance with paragraph 3 (c) of resolution 1591 (2005).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The World Food Programme and the UN\u2019s Food and Agriculture Organization found in a recent report that food security in Sudan had significantly deteriorated even faster than anticipated, and that there is a risk of \u201ccatastrophic conditions\u201d hitting the states of West and Central Darfur \u201cduring the lean season in early 2024,\u201d roughly from April to July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network a US government-funded group that monitors food insecurity, said in February that the \u201cworst-affected populations \u2026 in Omdurman (in Khartoum state) and El Geneina (in West Darfur state)\u201d were expected to soon see \u201cCatastrophe (IPC Phase 5) outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, a globally recognized scale used to classify food insecurity and malnutrition, catastrophic conditions are the fifth and worst phase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program determines that famine is occurring when over 20 percent of an area\u2019s population are facing extreme food gaps, and children\u2019s acute malnutrition and mortality exceed emergency rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to news figures released by the Nutrition Cluster in Sudan, nearly 230,000 children, pregnant women, and new mothers could die in the coming months due to hunger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Darfur, civil society and local leaders have repeatedly sounded the alarm about hunger among displaced people living in camps in areas under RSF control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leaders shared that their communities have resorted to eating ants, tree bark, and animal feed. People currently in West Darfur include survivors of waves of attacks by the RSF and their allied militias, which Human Rights Watch has described as \u201chaving all the hallmarks of an organized campaign of atrocities against Massalit civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A local government official reported in early March that 22 children had died of hunger in Murnei, a town in West Darfur that was the site of horrific RSF attacks in June 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In January, Doctors Without Borders raised the alarm on malnutrition in Zamzam camp in North Darfur, warning that \u201can estimated one child is dying every two hours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A camp leader from Kalma camp in Nyala (South Darfur) told Human Rights Watch that 500 to 600 children and at least 80 older people have died in the camp since the start of the conflict because of what he believed was the result of lack of food and medical supplies. \u201cPeople [are] dying every day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said that the RSF has also been limiting the amount of food supplies entering the camp since it took control of the city in October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Khartoum, a communication blackout has forced hundreds of communal kitchens run by Sudanese emergency response rooms, a grassroots mutual aid network, to pause operations, leaving many people without food, and reports of people dying alone in their homes of hunger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe shutdown has a significant impact on food access and distribution,\u201d a member of one of the emergency response rooms in Khartoum told Human Rights Watch in mid-February, \u201cit is happening while we are facing growing food insecurity and risk of famine in the capital.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the first time Sudan has been spotlighted in this kind of an alert from the secretary-general to the Security Council. Guyana, Switzerland, the US, and other Security Council members have pledged to make combating food insecurity a priority for the UN\u2019s most powerful body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCouncil members should show leadership by holding open discussions to develop a plan that averts the risk of mass starvation in Sudan and imposing targeted sanctions on the individuals responsible for obstructing aid, Kumar,\u201d said. \u201cThe people of Sudan need more than words. They need food.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the vicious war in Sudan between the national army\u2014Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the formidable paramilitary forces \u2018Rapid Support Forces\u2019 (RSF) rages nationwide intensely risking spurring the world\u2019s largest hunger crisis, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strategizes to brief the UN Security Council on measures to impose targeted sanctions against individuals believed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,7],"tags":[28,57,26,20,56,55],"yoast_head":"\n