World donors pledged more than $2.1 billion in humanitarian aid for Sudan after a yearlong war that has pushed its population to the brink of famine, French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday.
Macron spoke at the end of an international conference in Paris aimed at drumming up support for Sudan’s 51 million people. The aid will go to food, water, medicines and other urgent needs, he said, without providing a specific timeline.
Top diplomatic envoys, U.N. officials and aid agencies urged Sudan’s warring parties to stop attacks on civilians and allow access for humanitarian aid, and called for immediate international mediation efforts toward peace.
Members of Sudan’s civil society took part in the Paris meeting, but neither the Sudanese army nor its rival paramilitary were represented.
“Today, from this mobilisation, all of our presence, it sends a clear messages we are sending to the belligerents. We are making a solemn appeal out of respect for international humanitarian rights and for the protection of the civil population,” Macron said at the conference.
Sudan descended into conflict in April last year when simmering tensions between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere across the country.
The United Nations’ humanitarian campaign needs some $2.7 billion this year to get food, health care and other supplies to 24 million people in Sudan — nearly half its population. So far, funders have given only $145 million, about 5%, according to the U.N’s humanitarian office, known as OCHA.
More than 14,000 people have been killed and at least 33,000 have been wounded in the yearlong war.
Nearly 9 million people have been forced to flee their homes either to safer areas inside Sudan or to neighbouring countries, according to the U.N. Hunger, sexual violence against women and girls and continued displacement are rampant and much of the country’s infrastructure — homes, hospitals and schools — has been reduced to rubble.
“We cannot let this nightmare slide from view,” Guterres said in a video message to the Paris conference.
“It’s time to support the Sudanese people. It’s time to silence the guns,” he added.
