UN appeals for $6 bn for Sudan crisis aid in 2025

The UN appealed Monday for six billion dollars to provide desperately-needed aid to people in war-ravaged Sudan, as the African country faced an emergency of "shocking proportions".

The aim is to provide assistance to nearly 26 million people this year, the United Nations' humanitarian agency OCHA and refugee agency UNHCR said in a joint appeal.

Since April 2023, Sudan has been locked in a brutal conflict between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The UN agencies said the civil war has displaced 12 million people, including around 3.5 million who have fled the country.

At the same time, nearly two-thirds of Sudan's population needs emergency aid, as swathes of the nation face famine conditions.

"Sudan remains in the grip of a massive humanitarian crisis," UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said at the appeal launch in Geneva.

Describing the situation as an emergency of "shocking proportions", he said that over half of Sudan's population was food insecure, "with alarming reports of famine conditions spreading", even as "women and girls continue to suffer through appalling patterns of conflict related sexual violence".

 'Catastrophe'  

Famine conditions have already been reported in at least five locations in Sudan, including in displacement camps in Darfur and in the western Nuba Mountains, the UN said.

"We are seeing in Sudan a full-scale hunger crisis... A catastrophe," World Food Programme chief Cindy McCain told Monday's launch, speaking via video link.

The UN said it was appealing for $4.2 billion to reach nearly 21 million people inside Sudan with life-saving aid and protection.

Seeming to hint at a recent dramatic halt in foreign aid spending by the United States -- traditionally the world's biggest aid donor, Fletcher acknowledged that it might seem strange that the UN was launching its biggest-ever appeal for Sudan "at a moment when the conversation is understandably around aid cuts and aid freezes".

But, he stressed, "a tough funding crisis doesn't mean that crises in places like Sudan disappear".

The UN plan, he said, would provide "a lifeline to millions".

UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi agreed, saying the appeals "represent the very basic needs of millions of people."

 Third of population displaced  

The UN is appealing for $1.8 billion to support 4.8 million people -- both refugees and their host communities -- in the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, South Sudan and Uganda.

"One-third of Sudan's entire population is displaced," Grandi said, stressing that "the consequences of this horrific and senseless conflict spread far beyond Sudan’s borders".

While the amount requested may sound high, UNHCR said that it was asking for just around $1 per person targeted per day.

Without immediate funding, two-thirds of refugee children would be denied access to primary education, "threatening an entire generation", the UN said.

And "up to 4.8 million refugees and host community members will continue to face severe food insecurity, with at least 1.8 million going without food assistance," it said, warning that "already strained health systems may collapse".

Last year, humanitarian organisations received $1.8 billion for Sudan -- 66 percent of the $2.7 billion requested -- and managed to reach more than 15.6 million people across the country.

The UN appeal for $1.5 billion to address the Sudan refugee crisis last year was meanwhile less than a third funded, but still managed to provide life-saving food assistance to over a million people in neighbouring countries, as well as medical support to half a million and protection services to over 800,000.