Sudan: Warring parties’ accord is ‘first important step toward alleviating human suffering’, says top UN official

The signing of an agreement by the Sudanese warring parties in the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah on Thursday night is a “first important step toward alleviating human suffering and protecting the lives of civilians in Sudan”, the UN’s top official in the country, Volker Perthes, said on Friday.

The agreement intended to lay down the groundwork for humanitarian assistance to resume in Sudan and stipulated that parties to the conflict need to facilitate the safe passage of aid supplies, the withdrawal of forces from hospital and clinics and the respectful burial of the dead.

Mr. Perthes, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sudan and Head of the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) said that both sides had committed to continuing their talks with the mediation of Saudi Arabia and the United States. They had reconfirmed on Friday morning their intent to stay and continue talks towards a real ceasefire, which would need to be accompanied by a monitoring mechanism.

Mr. Perthes noted that earlier ceasefires and humanitarian pauses had come up short because they had all been unilateral announcements. The next step will be to negotiate a ceasefire which would allow those action from the signed agreement to take place. “This is the first time that we have a mutual declaration – this is not a ceasefire- but a mutual signed declaration of the two warring parties on respecting international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and some more concrete provisions like vacating hospitals and medical facilities, which is good,” Mr. Perthes said. He added that “of course, the aim is to have a ceasefire which is also mutually agreed which I hope would give more stability and more respect to a ceasefire than when it is only based on unilateral (declarations).”

Also on Friday, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that “around 200,000 refugees and returnees have been forced to flee the country with more crossing borders daily, seeking safety”. According to UNHCR spokesperson Olga Sarrado “additionally, hundreds of thousands have been internally displaced with many more people confined to their homes unable to access necessities”.

Ms. Sarrado explained that “the humanitarian response to this emergency is challenging and costly, not only inside Sudan because of insecurity but also as refugees and returnees are arriving in remote border areas in neighboring countries where services and infrastructures are scarce or non-existent. The coming rainy season will make logistics even harder as many roads will become impassible.”

For neighboring Chad, she said that “an additional 30,000 refugees have been arriving in the recent days, this makes the total number of refugees in Chad to about 60,000. The majority are women, and with a large number of women being pregnant.” According to UNHCR, a full 20 per cent of children being between six months and five years caught up in the conflict have been found to be acutely malnourished. To help, additional emergency relief has been airlifted to Chad from the UNHCR warehouse in Dubai."

UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, reported on Friday that a factory in Khartoum producing therapeutic food for children suffering from malnutrition had been burned down, with vital nutritional support incinerated.

“That fire has destroyed 14,500 cartons of ready to use therapeutic food and that was set to be transported to locations for what is life-saving treatment for around 14,500 children for six to eight weeks. You can equate one carton to one child,” said James Elder, UNICEF's spokesperson.

The destroyed factory had been producing 60 per cent of all therapeutic food to treat malnourished children in Sudan. To respond to the malnutrition crisis in Sudan, UNICEF has sent 34,000 cartons of ready-to-use therapeutic food from France.

Despite the selfless efforts by health professionals on the ground, the conflict has continued to have a very severe effect on children, whose access to health care remains limited and unsafe.

Describing the food carton factory incident as “probably the darkest, most distinct illustration to date of how this conflict is threatening the lives of children through multiple means”, UNICEF’s Mr. Elder said that this is certainly “another bitter blow to the most vulnerable children in Sudan.”

It remains unclear whether the factory was torched intentionally or accidentally.

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