Aid Chief Warns Sudan Risks Becoming a Failed State

Sudan, a nation ravaged by conflict, faces the prospect of becoming another failed state as its civil society crumbles amidst a surge of armed factions, the head of a prominent international aid organization informed the BBC. Jan Egeland, who leads the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), stated that in addition to the two primary warring factions in Sudan—the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—numerous smaller “ethnic armies” are engaging in looting and acting “berserk” towards civilians. He commented, “The parties are tearing down their own houses, they are massacring their own people.” For 19 months, a brutal power struggle has persisted between the army and the RSF, compelling over 10 million individuals to abandon their homes and pushing the country to the brink of starvation. Following a visit to Sudan, Mr Egeland declared, “All that I saw confirms that this is indeed the biggest humanitarian emergency on our watch, the biggest hunger crisis, the biggest displacement crisis.” In September, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) reported that starvation in Sudan was “almost everywhere.” Soup kitchens have been forced to cease operations due to a lack of funding. Egeland remarked that the insufficient humanitarian response meant that existing aid provisions were merely “delaying deaths instead of preventing them.” “Most of Sudan is starving, it’s starving,” he asserted, adding that starvation has been utilized as a method of warfare. Some food security specialists are concerned that as many as 2.5 million people could succumb to hunger by the close of this year. Mr Egeland cautioned that the global community was “failing Sudan completely” by not taking adequate action. He told the BBC that if Europe wished to prevent a refugee crisis, it needed to invest in “aid, protection and peace in this corner of the world.” “It’s an underfunded operation, even though it’s the world’s biggest emergency,” he added. Thousands of individuals have been killed since the outbreak of civil war. Rights groups have also voiced fears regarding the potential for ethnic cleansing and genocide in Sudan. Despite these circumstances, peace negotiations between the RSF and the army have proven unproductive. Egeland stated, “The war will stop when these warlords feel they have more to lose by continuing fighting, than by doing the sensible thing.”