France to host humanitarian conference for Sudan as war enters 11th month
France is to host a humanitarian conference to provide aid to war-torn Sudan in April, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné said this week.
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"We will host a humanitarian conference in Paris on 15 April for Sudan and neighbouring countries to help resolve this dramatic humanitarian crisis," Stéphane Sejourné told the lower house of parliament, without providing more details.
"It should not become a forgotten crisis," he added.
The United Nations has urged countries not to forget the civilians caught up in the war in Sudan, appealing for $4.1 billion to meet their humanitarian needs and support those who have fled to neighbouring countries.
Food insecurity
The conference will take place exactly a year after the conflict started.
The war that broke out in April last year between Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, his former deputy and commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has killed thousands, displaced millions, and sparked a humanitarian disaster.
Around 25 million people (more than half the population) need aid, including nearly 18 million who face acute food insecurity, according to the United Nations.
The fighting has also caused 1.6 million people to flee abroad, many to neighbouring Chad and Egypt, and displaced 6.1 million from their homes within the country, the UN says.
The World Health Organization warned that the lean season during summer could trigger catastrophic levels of hunger.
Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad in particular are facing "the world's worst humanitarian crisis", Norwegian Refugee Council's Secretary General Jan Egeland told RFI.
One of the poorest countries in the world has taken in over 700,000 refugees in less than a year. But nobody’s talking about it.https://t.co/92D6xi9o9O
— Norwegian Refugee Council (@NRC_Norway) February 16, 2024
International crisis
According to the International Organisation for Migration, nearly 700,000 people have crossed the border toward Chad in 10 months of war in Sudan, fleeing the violence of the belligerents, particularly in Darfur, where minorities are targeted on ethnic grounds.
Last weekend, at the African Union's two-day summit, the organisation's Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat painted a "bleak picture" with a "litany of difficulties" confronting many countries, but especially Sudan.
The country was "bruised, torn, sinking into chaos," Faki said.
The head of French diplomacy also underlined that France stood “in support of African regional organisations to facilitate ways out of crises” on the African continent.
(with newswires)
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