By Nafisa Eltahir
(Reuters) -The funding gap for aid agencies is accentuating Sudan’s crisis, leaving them unable to help many of the tens of thousands of people fleeing from the Darfur city of al-Fashir and other areas, U.N. migration chief Amy Pope said.
The war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which began in April 2023, has created what the U.N. has called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis at a time when global aid budgets are shrinking.
Some 12.5 million Sudanese were displaced within and outside the country as of mid-October, with an additional 140,000 since fleeing RSF attacks on al-Fashir and towns in the Kordofan region.
FUNDING SHARPLY DOWN
But the International Organization for Migration’s $229 million appeal for Sudan for this year is less than 10% funded, according to U.N. data. That is down from 44% of $212 million last year, before cuts to foreign aid by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and other donors.
“We’ve just shipped out our last 35 tents from a warehouse. Now we have another 2,000 that are in customs right now, but if you think about the scale of the need … it’s nowhere close,” IOM head Pope told Reuters in an interview by video link from Sudan.
In the town of Tawila, an assessment before the latest influx of people found only 10% of people in camps there had reliable access to water and even fewer had access to latrines.
Nearly 90,000 people are known to have left famine-stricken al-Fashir since the RSF overran it, with many more unaccounted for. IOM data shows most have fled to areas around al-Fashir, inaccessible to aid agencies, in part due to safety concerns.
“The first response is simply insufficient to meet needs, and when people do not get their most basic needs met in the first instance, then the needs become compounded,” said Pope.
That fuels repeated displacements, including westward to impoverished Chad, and to other countries including Libya, a common departure point for risky boat journeys across the Mediterranean, Pope said.
The IOM said on Wednesday that some 29 Sudanese people were presumed dead after the rubber boat they were in capsized off the Libyan coast.
REPRISALS AGAINST PEOPLE TRYING TO FLEE
People who made it out of al-Fashir after it fell to the RSF following a long siege continue to give accounts of reprisals against those trying to leave.
Mohieldin Bakheet, who lost two children when a drone targeted their shelter inside the city, said RSF fighters intercepted his group as they left the city.
The RSF started a livestream on their phones, he said, speaking from the army-controlled town of al-Dabba. “At first it was really great talk about helping us… Then one of the armoured vehicles came and ran people over without any warning.” At least 30 were killed in the incident, he said.
Reuters could not independently verify his account. Reached for comment, an RSF official said that the RSF is investigating such claims but that there was an organised media campaign against the force.
“I’m burning inside,” Bakheet said of losing his wife, children, and sisters to the war.
(Reporting by Eltayeb Siddig in al-Dabba and Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
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