UN appeals for $4.1 billion in aid for war-torn Sudan and refugee-hosting countries

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OCHA/UNHCR: Press Conference on Sudan - 07 February 2024

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07-02-2024

Edited News , Press Conferences | OCHA , UNHCR

UN appeals for $4.1 billion in aid for war-torn Sudan and refugee-hosting countries

ENG FRA

Shotlist Story

Speakers:

· Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (OCHA)

· Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

TRT: 2’16”
SOURCE: UNTV CH
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
DATELINE: 07 February 2024 - GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
Press conference at UNOG

SHOTLIST

Exterior medium shot: UN flag alley
Wide shot of press conference room with journalists
SOUNDBITE (English) Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator: “Half of the population of Sudan needs humanitarian assistance, 25 million people, far too many of them children. Eighteen million people are, quote unquote, ‘acutely food insecure’.”
Wide shot: press room with journalists and photographer
SOUNDBITE (English) Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator: “If we start seeing famine in Sudan -it won't be the first time we've seen famine in Sudan- to add to this violence and displacement and lack of access and lack of a political horizon, then I think we can all agree we have no humanity in us that would allow this to happen.”
Wide shot: press room
SOUNDBITE (English) Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees: “We are already seeing people fleeing Sudan, especially along certain routes from East Sudan and from Chad itself, where there's many of them towards Libya, Tunisia and then towards Europe. So, I have warned literally European countries in particular, that if the current neglect of this crisis continues, we will see secondary movements.”
Medium shot: podium with speakers
SOUNDBITE (English) Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees: “When you ask people ‘would you go back if there was a cease fire’, they think carefully about the answer, and say ‘we would have to be convinced that there is a real peace and that the militia is not going to come into our house and kick us out again’. So, the message that I passed to the leadership and will continue to pass to the two leaderships is really ‘you're losing your own people. What's the purpose of fighting if you don't have people to rule?’”
Various shots of the press room

UN appeals for $4.1 billion in aid for war-torn Sudan and refugee-hosting countries

The United Nations on Wednesday urged countries not to forget millions of people caught up in the conflict in Sudan as it called for $4.1 billion to help stave off famine fears and assist those who fled abroad to bordering States.

To date, the 10-month war has created one of the world’s “largest displacement and protection crises”, according to UN agencies. “Half of Sudan’s population, 25 million people, needs humanitarian assistance,” said Martin Griffiths, the UN’s emergency relief chief and head of the UN aid coordination office, OCHA.

Speaking to journalists in Geneva, he emphasized that far too many of those in need were children, and that 18 million people were acutely food insecure.

The spread of the conflict between Sudan’s armed forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to areas such as Gezira state, the country’s breadbasket, has prompted warnings of famine. “If we start seeing famine in Sudan to add to the violence, displacement and lack of a political horizon, then I think we can all agree we have no humanity in us that would allow this to happen,” Mr. Griffiths said.

Two in three people in Sudan lack access to healthcare and approximately 19 million children are out of school.

To provide humanitarian assistance inside Sudan, OCHA needs $2.7 billion to help 14.7 million people.

For all those who’ve fled the country, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) requested an additional $1.4 billion to support 2.7 million people displaced in five countries bordering Sudan whose resources are spent.

Last year appeal to provide aid to civilians in Sudan was funded up to 38 per cent.

At a press conference in Geneva, UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi described a recent meeting with displaced families in Sudan and Ethiopia and warned of the regional implications of ignoring the crisis, as people who have already fled Sudan now aim for Libya, Tunisia and then Europe. “I have warned literally European countries that if the current neglect of this crisis continues, we will see secondary movements,” Mr. Grandi added.

Sudan’s middle class has been largely impacted by the urban devastation, people that from one day to the other had their lives upended. Although they are eager to go back home and resume their activities, people are becoming more and more wary, the High Commissioner for Refugees said: “When you ask people, ‘Would you go back if there was a ceasefire?’, they think carefully about the answer. ‘We would have to be convinced that there is a real peace and that the militia is not going to come into our house and kick us out again.’ The message that I passed and will continue to pass to the two leaderships (of Sudan) is, ‘You're losing your own people. What's the purpose of fighting if you don't have people to rule?’”

The conflict is estimated to have killed more than 13,000 people and over 10 million people have been displaced. Sudan’s rival militias shared power after longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir was toppled in a popular uprising in 2019. Conflict erupted last April after a power struggle developed between the two military factions amid a faltering transition towards elections and civilian-led government. The fighting has continued to escalate despite international efforts to reach a ceasefire.

Ends

Teleprompter

[Other language spoken]

Thank you for joining us here at the UN Office of Geneva for this press conference with Mr.

Martin Griffiths, the Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, and Mr Filippo Grandi, the UN **** Commissioner for Refugees.

Now they're coming here to speak with you following a meeting they had this morning on a joint launch of the Sudan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan in Sudan, a very general refugee response plan for this year, 2024.

We'll start off immediately with Mr Griffiths with some opening remarks and then Mr Grande immediately afterwards, and then to you for your questions.

Thank you, Martin.

Is that it?

[Other language spoken]

I want to just say a few brief things.

Firstly, the sort of the some some of the big, the big figures Filippo and I are launching today.

As you know, both the humanitarian response plan for inside Sudan and Filippo leading the regional response plan for the neighbouring countries are affected by the conflict.

And I'm speaking about inside Sudan and that's in our limit my remarks to inside Sudan, which we we're about to hit a 10 month mark within a week, I think of the war.

Sudan has hugely lost media attention and this has been very, very difficult indeed.

Filippo will speak, I know about his recent visit to Sudan.

It's very, very difficult to get attention to Sudan, which in my view is a a place of as great a suffering as anywhere in the world today.

It's simply also a ****** to the stability of the wider region, not just the immediate region, but beyond.

And the lack of access for us is very, very considerable.

So we, we're trying to reach, we, we have a plan for $2.7 billion for this year, 2024.

Last year we were about 40% funded.

We hope to do better this year.

We're trying to help 17.4 million people with these, with these two plans.

The, the one that I'm responsible for also has half, half the population, 25 million people need assistance and half of them are, are children.

So it's, it's, it's, it's extraordinary grave.

And it's a, it's a place where, as Filippo has knows first hand from his recent visit, there has been no schooling for kids since this, in this last nine months, 910 months, hospitals have been destroyed.

It's, there's been an epidemic of attacks on health institutions, looting on many of your warehouses by the parties.

But I want to make 333 points really, and then stop #1 as we have been hearing in the meeting that we just come from, of course, the solution to the, to the these many, many problems and there's, you have all the details in the briefing packs, is peace.

Of course it is.

And of course we are seeing no progress towards peace in these ten months.

And it's not the only place we see no progress towards peace, but it's one which is particularly striking because of the geographical strategic importance of Sudan within that part of the world, within Africa.

I once attended an EGAD meeting, this is back in July, in, in, in Addis.

But it didn't lead to anything.

There have been meetings of the neighbours.

As you know, Filippo has been been to all the neighbouring countries.

But the the lack of political diplomacy that of any concerted effort to bring peace is a striking feature of the war in Sudan #2 this is a war decided by two generals who decided to resolve the differences in a process of transition.

[Other language spoken]

Not by proceeding with an agreed plan for transition, but but deciding let's just go to war.

[Other language spoken]

And the the, this theme of reaching for the gun first, a war as the first instrument of choice to resolve differences.

Nowhere is this more clear than Sudan.

It's clear in other places as well.

Gaza, of course, Ukraine, certainly, and elsewhere.

But Sudan is a very clear example of it.

Second point, the heroism of civil society.

I had the opportunity to meet in New York last week with about 15 to 20 representatives from across the country who ran emergency rooms.

Emergency rooms are, as you know, the sort of the neighbourhood places for Aid Fumanto and Aid these people never left Khartoum and he's never, never left Darfur.

And they went for a visit to brief people and they're going straight back.

They'll be there already back in these places which are a place of ****.

And the courage of these people were striking.

And two, two things I'd like to mention about them.

Number one, I asked them if they still felt that they were Sudanese given the breakup of that country.

And they looked at me with shock actually.

And they said, course, we're Sudanese.

[Other language spoken]

We do not distinguish between whether we're in Khartoum or, or, or South Korafan or Darfur.

We are definitely Sudanese, but if there's no doubt that the that that that identity is under ******.

The second thing is was that they absolutely refused, avoided, weren't interested in discussing the politics of the war.

They were absolutely ruthlessly focused on being neutral humanitarian aid workers helping their own neighbourhoods.

They were utter professionals as well as brave, which I I found very striking and and actually quite unusual.

And then my final point on is on humanitarian access.

We were involved in the first gender process.

There was I think A7 day pause, the only one that's really happened.

It was very helpful actually at the time.

We managed to get a lot of movements of humanitarian supplies through to places like Khartoum and others, but that was many, many, many many months ago.

Jeddah 2.0 lasted about 5 days in this second Jeddah ocher and the UN has the privilege of of being the mediator between the two sides negotiating on access.

And I have been in touch in the last couple of weeks with both Generals Burhan and Hemeti to get them to follow up their commitments, the so-called gender declarations.

Remember that they all signed to to declare their commitment to international humanitarian law and helping us on access.

There was a plan to actually have such a meeting here in Switzerland.

Who cares where it is, frankly, They both said that they would attend.

And I'm still waiting, I'm still waiting to see when that happens.

It is essential that these in in the, in the immediate term that we have access to empowered representatives of the two militaries so that we can negotiate access, so that we can make convoys move and access to people that we can't reach and supplies to people who need them.

And that leads me to the last point, of course, which is the first point, which is peace.

There's nothing, there's nothing so important anywhere in any of our places that we work as peace.

But peace in Sudan seems to be so elusive, so far away from the reality of the people who have been displaced, who are lacking the slightest of resources, but who still are brave enough to consider themselves Sudanese people, patriots of that country.

[Other language spoken]

I'll just build on what Martin said, especially on your second point on civil society and I I agree.

I'm just back from a few days in Sudan myself, Port Sudan Castle at the east of the country that as far as I could go security wise.

But I have to say our people are also in other places, although very complicated to work because they have to move constantly according to these very shifting front lines.

Remember this is not a straight frontline.

This is a very fragmented frontline in the middle of in the midst of which you have a lot of different factions, mini factions, sub factions.

So, for example, for our colleagues who are doing cross-border into Darfur, it's a, it's a constant process of negotiations to, to, to access places where people need help.

So it's complicated and, and, and, and difficult.

But the key point here is Sudan is, is, is a country that has gone through a lot of trouble in the past 50 years or since independence, essentially including by the way, separation into two countries.

But it's civil society has always been very resilient.

[Other language spoken]

This is the point for me was the most striking, knowing Sudan quite well is to see how much the middle class has been impacted by this urban devastation in in in Khartoum, in Madani, in other smaller towns.

Now, therefore, some of the Cardiff fans and that's the people you meet that those are the displaced.

You have very vulnerable cases, of course, but you have people that from one day to the other had to interrupt very normal Sudanese lives.

People with, you know, government officials are not paid anymore.

I know their wives, children, students that have stopped going to school and everything has collapsed, health access, education access, security, their own homes that are often occupied by these fighting forces.

So it's really an an unbelievable impact on an ordinary country in a way or ordinary society that and what all these people are telling us is I think that by the way, if there was peace, people would be largely going back.

And because they're eager to resume normal life.

This is the message you constantly hear, but it's also true that people are becoming more and more wary of that.

And like I said at the previous meeting, when you ask people would you go back if there was a ceasefire, they think carefully about the answer, He said.

We would be have to be convinced that there is real peace and that they're, you know, that the militia is not going to come into our house and kick us out again.

So the message that I passed to the leadership and will continue to pass to the two leaderships is really you're losing your own people.

What's the purpose of fighting if you then you don't have people to rule?

And, and if this is about power sharing and control, it's a pretty absurd, besides being a pretty devastating and, and murderous fight.

Otherwise, you know, you, you have all the, the information, you know, the destruction, the displacement massive.

This is together with Syria and Ukraine.

This is one of the three big ones in terms of displacement and humanitarian impact, separations of families.

The displacement, as I said earlier, is also very complex because you have straightforward displacement of Sudanese, some insight, some you know one and one point, 1,000,000 Sudanese outside, but you have a lot of refugees that lived in Sudan.

Sudan hosted well over 1,000,000 people before the war, many of whom are now displaced themselves and many of whom have to go back in a precipitous manner to their own country, especially the South Sudanese.

And those countries are not yet ready to receive such big numbers.

The neighbouring countries are all very fragile.

South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, these are big ones.

And then you have Egypt caught between Gaza and Sudan.

So it's a very, it's also about stability in the region that this is quite worrying.

It is about the fact that, and I am very confident in saying this, we are already seeing people fleeing Sudan, especially along certain routes from East Sudan and from Chad itself, where there's many of them, towards Libya, Tunisia and then towards Europe.

So I have warned, literally European countries in particular, that if the current neglect of this crisis continues, we will see secondary movements as we call them.

You know, in all these, my eight years, I've been very prudent in making this argument because I don't think there is always an automatic correlation.

But here I'm confident I can make it.

There will be more movements because in Sudan access is patchy and assistance is limited.

In neighbouring countries, assistance is limited, although they've been extremely generous in getting people in.

But then if you cannot have people there sufficiently with 3840 forty 2% funding, we cannot do everything that we should be doing.

So really I hope this 4/1 billion appeal is going to be better responded than last year.

I have one last point to make.

There is another complication here as we all know, which is that we are not facilitated in our operation, in our humanitarian operation.

There is an enormous superstructure of visa slow visa approval, customs clearance that takes ages travel permit all the ways that at central but in particular at local level authorities have to really slow it down.

Frankly speaking, they're being used.

I've passed a strong appeal and I have to say, at least at the Port Sudan level, I got positive responses that they're trying to set up this one stop shop to get everything cleared more rapidly.

But it is important to say it to say that it is still an obstacle and it it will also discourage donors and contributions if that is not resolved.

And by the way, that includes you people.

I made a strong point to the authorities that I wanted to travel with international media because otherwise we can't make this crisis as known as we would like.

I received positive replies that they will allow international media to travel with us.

I'm going to try again soon.

[Other language spoken]

Thanks to you both very much.

I appreciate we don't have a lot of times for question and answer, but we'll start off with Gabrielle of Reuters and then we'll take a few questions online.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

You mentioned during the launch this morning that you had attempted to get the warring parties to come to Geneva to secure access.

I'm just wondering what those efforts have consisted in and your hopes about this actually happening.

If I can squeeze in the second quick question, it was the appeal was and have funded last year.

What are your hopes?

What what can be different this time around?

What, what will make it better this time?

[Other language spoken]

Just a quick answer to the second one, I think picks up, picks up on Filippo's last point, which is international attention.

There is a direct correlation obviously between international attention created by yourselves.

That's why we are your servants and always want to be with you wherever we go.

Come with me on my next holiday if you wouldn't mind.

And funding, there's a direct relationship.

It is, however, true that there is limited amounts of money.

Gaza is taking up a whole lot more, you know, a new one and so forth.

[Other language spoken]

So we will, we will be doing our best.

I'm not an optimist actually.

But in fact, the first priority is, is access, and then we'll be able to use the money that we've got.

And that goes to your first question.

So look, I spoke to the 2 generals, at least I think I did.

I mean, I, I was told I was speaking to the two generals at the time.

And who am I to question the words of others?

And I said we we need to convene the humanitarian forum, which is, as you know, to the name simply for empowered representatives of the two militaries to come together virtually or physically, ideally physically like in the Jeddah, one process, but this time run by us, not by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the US.

This time it's the UN will be the mediator to to discuss precise access planning, to discuss movements and so forth.

They both said yes that they would be happy to come.

In fact they said to Switzerland because they for reasons.

Well, anyway, they said yes, we'll come into Switzerland.

I said I don't mind where you go.

I mean we'll go wherever you want to go or but ideally face to face to begin with.

And I'm still waiting for a confirmation of when and when and where they will come.

And as we have heard in the earlier meeting, I think the Sudanese ambassador was talking about the fact that the RSF has still not fulfilled its apparent promise to leave civilian structures that was negotiated under gender one and that this is given as a reason for not reconvening under gender two.

Well, of course I disagree with this because.

I have never been in a mediation where people have done everything that they promised ever exactly.

I mean otherwise.

So we need them to come together to get moved.

We need them to come together to remind them that they made those declarations which were very, very clear.

And if we could get that access, we could.

I think with UNHCR and others in the lead, we could perform some humanitarian miracles because of the courage and the presence and the relentless efforts of the frontline deliverers, the Sudanese, the NGOs.

Thank you very much.

We'll take a question, maybe front row Jamie from Associated Press.

And I know that Mister Grande, you need to leave soon, but let's.

[Other language spoken]

Jamie, over to you.

Thank you, Rolando, thank you for coming to see us.

I, I wanted to just follow up on, based on your experience, we, we obviously see that there's not a lot of humanitarian funding going around at all right now.

And, and the, the, the, the, the well is, is running drier, let's say.

So I guess I'm just wondering in your experience, when you do have access, when you do get access, does that serve as an impetus to get more funding in other words, or the fact that you're blocking is, is is a way to you're facing these blockages of access that that's a better calling card to get donors to step up it just in in your vast experience in these situations?

Yeah, Jamie, if you don't mind, I'll, I'll, I'll pick on this then.

I don't know if Martin wants to add, but I think it's the reason why there is insufficient funding is not only the obstacles and the limited access, but we know the general context.

I mean, there is a debate going on in Washington as we speak on the supplemental, which includes A hefty allocation for humanitarian funding, part of which could be used in a crisis like this.

But everything is stuck for a completely different reason.

I don't need to tell you that.

So there is that background, but it is also true and that was my strong message in Sudan to the militaries that if they, because they are asking for more assistance, that if those obstacles were lifted and in particular, if we could have more access cross line, for example, that's now the key because some cross-border is happening, but cross line is very difficult.

If we could do that, I think that would trigger more, there would be more goodwill because donors also constrained by funding.

They are, they have to choose and they will say, well, if they cannot deliver there, let's give it to a place where they can deliver.

So that argument exists as well.

But let me repeat, it's not the only one.

Scarcity of humanitarian funding is a dramatic problem in my opinion, in a situation in which our needs, you know, we have every eight months in major humanitarian crisis and the funding is stuck at levels of 2-3 years ago frankly, if at all, if not going backwards.

So I think that the reasons are not only that, but that is that would facilitate freeing up at least some of the, it's not only that.

Also what we can do even with the funding that we have would increase exponentially if we could have more access as you said earlier, OK, we'll take maybe in the back we have Mussaf Almaydin and then we'll go online afterwards.

So then we'll come back to the room.

[Other language spoken]

La, la negotiation on the yard.

[Other language spoken]

You don't need soccer.

[Other language spoken]

I'm British, so of course I don't understand a word that you said because you used a foreign language.

[Other language spoken]

Sudan is not the only place we see an absence of political diplomacy we're still waiting and hoping for Aun envoy for Myanmar, for example, as as a means to kick start political diplomacy.

We the Gaza war and its effect, as you know, for example, in Yemen and the Red Sea have have have taken political diplomacy backwards.

But it is striking that in Sudan the absence of political diplomacy which has has involved essentially, you know, arguments between member states as to who should be in which group, who should be present.

Is it IGAD, IGAD plus AU is, is it who should lead Sudanese have objections to one of the leaders from the EGAD group and so on and so forth.

So, So what we've seen is, is argument about the who's going to sit around the table before we even get to the issue.

So that's one of the problems on, on, on the political front.

The, the second one is, which I think is, is very, I think is hugely important politically speaking, as a former mediator is the absence of civilians.

It's all very well for generals to start a war, but you need civilians, civil society, as Philippe was talking about to help end it.

And the the absence of, of just perhaps even disorganised discussions between civilian groups and military groups would make would, would be a huge step forward.

It would start giving people hope and there isn't any hope for the moment without it.

Second, second question was about pledges.

We, I don't think we had any.

Yes, we did hear some pledges, didn't we, EU and Finland and and so forth.

But we, we, we, we, we weren't expecting to hear, you know, a huge amount.

I mean, it will come in and we will find out in the next few weeks.

[Other language spoken]

This is not, this is more of a launch of a plan.

Last year, we did a pledging conference as well, didn't we?

More than more than more than one.

[Other language spoken]

And then no doubt that we're going to have to do that this year as well.

But let's be very clear.

And every single humanitarian crisis across the world, the absence of a political diplomacy, of a mediation process, of a peace process always makes conditions more difficult for for the humanitarians in every single country that I've come across where you see that.

Can I add one point to this and This is why?

Also, unfortunately, I should say, we resort to humanitarian diplomacy.

I mean, what Martin just described about trying to convene the two leaders here or wherever to talk about at least access is a substitute for what doesn't happen, which is political diplomacy.

I mean, you know, President Chisekedi here in Geneva last year asked me to establish dialogue between Rwanda and Congo on refugee issues.

You know, try to do that in the absence of any political progress in that conflict.

And we know the list is long.

Myanmar, you went there.

It's always the same.

[Other language spoken]

I think that's the key issue.

The humanitarians are not giving up, but in an increasing emptiness of political initiatives, which makes it very difficult.

Yes, it was striking in the, in the, in that last meeting that people, some of the representatives of member states pointed to me of all people to say, why don't you, you're an Under Secretary general of the United Nations.

Why don't you start getting involved in doing some politics?

Well, you know, I'm not on that side of the House.

I'm on the nice side of the House, not the black side of the UN.

And I tried to be quite careful not to poach too much.

But we, we, we have many discussions in the UN in New York about Sudan and elsewhere.

And in all of the discussions that I've been involved in, I'm sure the same for you.

It's, it's all about humanitarian and the world also uses that.

You know, humanitarian access and delivery of aid is seen often as a placebo.

And it's not a placebo.

It's not a replacement for peace.

Gaza has been all about all about humanitarian aid, hasn't it?

Well, that's fine and well, but it's not it's not the same.

And I come from a mediation background.

I can see why people talk about humanitarian aid.

There's something, something to discuss, but doesn't solve the problem of the people ultimately.

[Other language spoken]

I appreciate we have a lot of interest, which is good.

[Other language spoken]

Just let me know when you need to leave.

[Other language spoken]

We'll start with Ben Lui of RTS Front Row.

[Other language spoken]

Little more precisions from you.

Mr Griffith about the timeline.

[Other language spoken]

Proposal of a negotiation here hosted by the UN.

Since when are you waiting for the answer and did?

They mention Switzerland, the country or the UN in Geneva, which happens to.

Be in Switzerland.

We've been making this proposal since Jeddah 2.0 stopped to meet, you know, I, I presumably in Jeddah.

So we've never stopped wanting to convene that group.

And we went through that.

[Other language spoken]

And we were moving on towards having that meeting of empowered military representatives.

We then then that stopped and there was a hiatus because of the disagreement of the parties that they didn't want to meet.

The, the what the process that I got involved in is, is has been in the last couple of weeks.

So I had conversations with the two leaders within the last couple of weeks.

But I knew that Switzerland had offered to be the host of talks between the two.

And that's why it was, it is not Aun proposal to be here, although delighted to be here, but it's a Swiss proposal.

There's a Swiss envoy for Sudan who was mentioned in my conversation with one of the generals, one of the two generals they'd met recently in Rwanda.

And the offer had been made and accepted.

And so I, I, I, I, as I say, I had positive responses from both sides and, and then the firm went silent.

And that's now been about 10 days.

Now what we're trying to do, because of course we're not giving up, is to have at least begin with a virtual call mediated by the humanitarian coordinator Clementine, who is based in Port Sudan, former UNHCR colleague, to have her begin the process at least virtually to get it going.

I'm keen to be part of a face to face because I know from, we all know from our direct experience that nothing quite substitutes for a face to face discussion.

And so we're still going to push for that, for that, even if we have a virtual 1 next week, say, you know, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a first step.

Thank you very much.

We will just go online for one, perhaps one last question.

And yes, Jean Franz Press and yes, over to you.

[Other language spoken]

Hi everybody.

Thank you for taking my question.

This question would be for Mr Griffiths on the lack of access.

I would like you to to explain better that is it a problem that you, you have the green lights, but you don't have security conditions for the humanitarian work?

Or is it that you you don't even have the the green lights for the parties to to do your your job?

If, if you could explain better.

And just a follow up on F TS question.

Did you say that you get some first approval of, of your proposal to to make the generals meet?

Was it a confirmation that they would come themselves or representatives?

[Other language spoken]

Representatives empowered.

I was asking for empowered representatives, people who had the authority to take decisions, obviously in consultation with their leaderships about specific humanitarian operations.

And I think the answer to your first question, if I understood it rightly was about it would, what goes on is discussions about there's we need to move a convoy from A to B, we need to move into across the line in Khartoum between RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces areas.

The convoy of trucks, 48 trucks will want to move on Wednesday morning or whatever, whatever, whatever.

And we needed your assurances that this will be allowed.

And now that you are on notice of this humanitarian plan, a lot of discussion as to whether that was right.

We would bring in the frontline deliverers, the emergency room people who would be involved, of course, in the actual distribution in Khartoum or Darfur or wherever.

Medani also now and then the plan would go ahead.

Without that, without those assurances, you can't move because there's far too much experience of convoys being looted, warehouses being bombed, aid work has been killed, without the assurances of the warring parties that they would allow such and such to happen.

And this is standard practise.

We do this all over the world.

We do this in every single conflict.

It's absolutely normal access negotiation.

[Other language spoken]

It's part of our core business.

And in this case, it is simply for those two generals who decided that they wanted to resolve their difference through violence to agree to at least allow, as Filippo said, so graphically allow their people to survive by virtue of providing some opportunity for humanitarian aid to go through.

And so, for example, it could be a convoy which starts in Port Sudan.

It was right across the country to Darfur.

It could be permission agreement to enter into Khartoum and start operating there.

MSF has a hospital, I think, still operating in Khartoum.

MSF bravest people in the world and for us to resupply we would need this kind of permission.

[Other language spoken]

But they're not, they're not doing it.

And of course they're not doing it because they are full of the, they're in full war like mode.

They see war as the current phase, not occasional pauses.

God knows, we've seen the issue of pauses in the news in the Gaza case, you know, and the importance and difficulties of that.

So we're not, we're not, we're not proceeding yet anything like where we'd like to be.

We know who the two sides are.

Obviously it's not, it's not a mystery.

We know that they can decide and empower.

We know that if they do that, we'll have to work with their lower level commanders right down to the local level.

We know all that.

We've done all that before.

But we need to start by having them have it at the highest level and then work down through and then let the convoy go.

[Other language spoken]

We will take first Isabel from the Spanish Service Agency and then we'll go online to Catherine from France.

[Other language spoken]

Yes, thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

How, how many people do you think you are missing with all these red tape problems, access problems in, in, in in Sudan?

And people that really need your aid for surviving.

And.

Secondly, on this meeting that is likely to happen sometime, it it could be a meeting focused on humanitarian issues.

Only or.

It could, it could be at a peace talk.

The beginning of of a.

Peace talk process well and there's very much mirror as well.

Filippo was saying it's it would be purely humanitarian.

Jed, the Jeddah process where you have the Usus and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as you know being the Co organisers and with some other Member States, I think as observers has as one of its potential still not actual activities, negotiating ceasefires.

We decided that what we would focus on was simply the provision of humanitarian resistance, humanitarian access.

And that's a different part of Jeddah.

And that's run by OCHA, that's run by us.

That's why we are the ones making the calls to to the generals.

And it was a negotiation that we had with the organisers of Jeddah, those two countries, to allow the UN to play that role because we did not play that role in Jeddah 1.

Jeddah 1 was the humanitarian access was negotiated by the US and Saudi Arabia with the two parties.

And I said that's my job.

And they agreed eventually, but we're still waiting for the actual meeting to happen.

But you're right to in a sense of the, the, as Filippo said it, it's also possibly, potentially the only time that we'll be able to get the parties together.

And as a mediator, getting people together really at almost any, at any level is a first step towards a process.

So humanitarian diplomacy, as, as Filippo was saying, has become a substitute for political activity.

People are more inclined to meet for humanitarian purposes than for political because it is doing good.

You know it, it's, it's a everybody can agree this is in, in, in, in done for the best of reasons and the best of motives and to help people and humanitarian diplomacy.

Filippo and I were very involved in Syria after the earthquake a year ago, a year ago this this yesterday, yesterday in working with President Assad and others to do provide progress towards return of refugees.

So we used humanitarian diplomacy and it it it, it was mingled with political diplomacy by the Arab League, of course, which eventually allowed President Assad to rejoin.

So that's I think the answer to the question was there were two questions I think you had just.

[Other language spoken]

How many people 25,000,000 25 Well, I'm, I'm reading from this, half of the population of Sudan needs humanitarian assistance.

25 million people, far too many of them children.

[Other language spoken]

WFP has been issuing warnings that the failure of the harvest, failure of the agricultural cycle because of the the the spread of the war risks increase increasing the number of food insecure people.

But there are 18 millionaire acutely food insecure, which is 10 million more than last year.

So it's, you know, the the vectors are going all in the wrong direction.

If we start seeing and it's, you know, we've seen it a bit in Gaza and we if we start seeing potential famine because that's what this is pointing towards of these numbers.

If we start seeing potential famine as a result of a failure of people can't plant, people can't harvest, people, you know, have got no access to food.

There's also a locust plague just adding to the excitement of events.

If we start seeing famine in Sudan, and it won't be the first time we've seen famine in Sudan to add to this violence and displacement and lack of access and lack of a political horizon, then I think we can all agree we have no humanity in us that will allow this to happen.

[Other language spoken]

It cannot allow a place like Sudan to suffer all these scourges at once.

Thank you very much, Mr Griffiths.

I know you're being very generous with your time.

We do have two hands still up online.

If if you can give us maybe 5 more minutes.

[Other language spoken]

But Catherine, you've been waiting patiently.

Franz Fong, Kat, Kat, over to you.

Thank you so much for taking my question.

I'd like to go back to the.

[Other language spoken]

As we know that there are 17.4 million people targeted, could you give us more details about the regions where these people are?

Are the regions situated at the borders and as you spoke a lot about difficulty of access.

Could you tell us which?

Region is the most difficult to access for humanitarian help.

[Other language spoken]

Well, we haven't been to Khartoum since October as as a system MSF is there to its huge credit, but we have not been providing aid into Khartoum since October, for example.

But the, the, the, the answer to the first part of your question is that the, that almost the entire country is now covered by the spread of the war.

[Other language spoken]

It's it's increased in South Kordofan.

I was being told the other day by representative from the Nuba Mountains, which is which is thought to be in a place of peace.

It's now receiving huge numbers of refugees in for safety from other parts of Sudan, Darfur.

We go in and out from Chad, but we have very little access within Darfur and it's very dangerous.

Wadi Medina was the jump off point, as you know, for Khartoum.

[Other language spoken]

Filippo's journey from Port Sudan to South Sudan, which is his plan.

I think when he went to Sudan the the other day, he couldn't, he wasn't allowed to make it because it was too dangerous to go across that across through Sudan down into South Sudan.

So there is almost no part of Sudan which is untouched.

Even in the very far north of Sudan we see of course people moving, displaced, trying to get into Egypt and so forth.

So there is nowhere where you can say there is a place of peace and quiet in Sudan.

I think I thank you very much, Mr Gryphon.

I'm apologies for those.

I know Kazmira and and Laron, I know you still have questions.

Maybe you can liaise with the Yens afterwards, but we'll have to stop it here.

I'd like to thank you very much for your for your time and for your focus.

And of course, to your colleagues, keep the spotlight bright on Sudan.

Thank you so very much for joining us here.

[Other language spoken]

We're hearing some potentially positive news, aren't we, about Gaza?

It's been reported that there may be the beginning of a breakthrough in the efforts mediated by Qatar and, and the United States and Egypt with Israel and Hamas of a potential breakthrough of a, of a, a long period of, of pause to allow hostages out and Palestinian prisoners out and then a period of so-called calm, which could lead to an end to the war.

Now, what, what, what you know, I don't want to be, I, I have no idea.

I have no inside, inside insights into this.

But it is a graphic difference from Sudan, isn't it?

So in Gaza, we have intense efforts by the international community.

Secretary Blinken is there on his, what is it, 6th or 7th visit.

Qatar is playing an extraordinary role of mediation.

Gaza has at least got attention, and with attention, it has international efforts to get to a peace process.

So it provides us with a clear contrast, a clear distinction with Sudan.

And that's partly because you're not there.

[Other language spoken]

He he failed to do so when he went there last time.

I should be going to sit down myself to, to, to Darfur in the next few, few weeks, hopefully taking media.

But it's an interesting reflection on our world where we see huge efforts.

And thank God for that.

[Other language spoken]

I'm celebrating the huge efforts that are made for Gaza and the attention being paid to Gaza, while at the same time Sudan is completely in the shadows where we're still arguing about who's actually going to do the mediation.

There's, there's, there's no justice in the world where you see such contrasts, where suffering is allowed to continue in one place while it is at least beginning to be addressed in another.

Thank you very much.

Thanks to you, Mr Griffiths.

[Other language spoken]