UN appeals for Security Council help to combat famine in Sudan

Senior UN officials appealed to the Security Council on Tuesday for help in getting humanitarian aid access in Sudan “across borders, across battle lines, by air, by land” to fight the famine that has taken hold in at least one site in North Darfur, Reuters has reported.

The United States suggested last month that the 15-member body should consider authorising aid access through border crossings like Adre from Chad. However, Sudan’s army-aligned government and Security Council veto-power Russia said yesterday that there was no need for the Council to act.

“If there is a famine… we are ready to cooperate with you, and we will open the crossings for any humanitarian assistance,” Sudan’s UN Ambassador Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith Mohamed told the Council. “It is not the government — that I am proud to present here — that is blocking humanitarian aid.”

Global hunger monitor the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said last week that more than 15 months of war in Sudan and restrictions on aid deliveries have caused famine in North Darfur’s Zamzam camp for internally displaced people. Sudan’s government has rejected the finding, while Russia has cast doubt on it.

The war in Sudan erupted in mid-April last year from a power struggle between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule.

Zamzam camp is in an area that is the last significant holdout from the RSF across Darfur. The RSF has been besieging the area and no aid has reached the sprawling site for months.

“When famine happens, it means we are too late,” senior U.N. aid official Edem Wosornu told the Security Council on Tuesday. “It means we did not do enough. It means that we, the international community, have failed.”

In February, the government in Khartoum banned aid deliveries through the Adre border crossing, one of the shortest routes to the hunger-stricken region. Government officials have claimed that the crossing is used by the RSF to move weapons.

According to Wosornu, though, “Adre would be the most effective route and would allow assistance to be delivered at the speed and scale required at this crucial, critical point.” She also pointed out that a UN Sudan aid appeal for $2.7 billion was only 32 per cent funded.

Senior UN World Food Programme official Stephen Omollo said that until there is a ceasefire, “We urgently need the [Security] Council’s help to ensure we can carry out our work effectively, and without interference.” He added that access is needed via Adre and other cross-border supply routes.

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield has suggested that the Security Council should consider adopting a resolution to approve cross-border aid deliveries into Sudan, mirroring action it took on Syria. No such action is imminent, said diplomats.

Russia’s Deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told the Council on Tuesday that the international community “should not interfere in the domestic affairs of Sudan on the pretext of the severe humanitarian situation and indicate to the legitimate authorities what humanitarian corridors should be open.”

Between 2014 and 2023 the Security Council authorised aid deliveries from neighbouring countries to millions of people largely in opposition-held areas of Syria. Authorisation was needed because the Syrian authorities in Damascus did not agree to the operation.

READ: Immediate action needed as famine conditions confirmed in parts of Sudan, UN says