UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A U.N. humanitarian official told the Security Council Tuesday that life-saving supplies are “ready to be loaded and shipped” to a famine-stricken refugee camp in Sudan, but the fighters of the civil war don’t let them through.
Edem Wosornu, director of operations at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told the council that “it is still possible to stop this freight train of suffering,” but that requires “the urgency that this moment demands.”
a report released thursday found that the Zamzam camp in South Sudan is likely to face famine and that the crisis will persist “as long as the conflict and limited humanitarian access persist.”
According to the report, at least 500,000 people are staying in the camp.
Sudan was plunged into conflict in April 2023 when fighting broke out between the army and a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, in the capital Khartoum. According to the UN, more than 14,000 people have been killed, 33,000 wounded and more than 10 million displaced.
Twenty-six million people in Sudan are facing acute hunger, Wosornu said. She said the UN and partners have provided food aid to 2.5 million people experiencing the worst famine since May.
The aid items now waiting to be shipped to Zamzam include essential medicines, nutritional products, water purification tablets and soap, Wosornu said. Aid workers are unable to access additional supplies in neighboring eastern Chad after heavy rains flooded the last border route Sudanese authorities had allowed for aid transport.
“We simply cannot move the vast amount of supplies needed to save lives and fight famine,” Wosornu said.
Stephen Omollo, deputy executive director of the World Food Programme, told the council that the agency will target people in Sudan facing “catastrophic famine emergencies” and provide assistance.
“We are significantly scaling up our activities across the country to combat the spread of famine, increasing our capacity, presence and resources,” Omollo said.
The WFP official added that the agency will continue to provide food and financial assistance to refugees in Chad and neighboring South Sudan and Libya.
Wosornu said the UN plans to provide more than $100 million in cash and vouchers by the end of the year.
However, both officials urged Security Council members to increase humanitarian funding.
According to OCHA, the humanitarian appeal for Sudan has received only $883 million of the $2.7 billion needed, or 33%.
Omollo also said the new famine report should serve as a “wake-up call” for the council to convince warring parties in Sudan to stop fighting and secure cross-border aid routes.
Wosornu said aid workers in Sudan “are being harassed, attacked and even killed,” while supply convoys carrying food, medicine and fuel “have been subjected to looting and extortion.”
Sudan’s UN ambassador Mohamed Ibrahim Elbahi accused the UN of downplaying the paramilitaries’ practices, such as looting aid convoys. This week, more than 4,000 liters of fuel (1,057 gallons) were stolen from a UN convoy. Civilians were also allegedly deliberately starved.
“The fact that these violations are not condemned encourages (RSF) to commit more atrocities. It also contributes to a false narrative about the source of the real suffering in Sudan,” Elbahi said.
Elbahi also disputed humanitarian officials’ claims about border crossings, saying Sudanese authorities have opened nine air, sea and land crossings this year and provided visas to thousands of aid workers.
The ambassador also strongly denied that the Zamzam camp is facing famine, accusing the experts behind it of “declaring famine on political grounds” as “punishment” for the Sudanese authorities, despite their cooperation with the UN.
