The world’s worst crisis of internal displacement continues to worsen, with risks of famine and disease adding to the ravages of the conflict, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned on Friday, quoted on the website “UN News”noting that the number of internally displaced people could exceed 10 million in this North-East African country.
The IOM Displacement Monitoring Matrix, which publishes weekly statistics, recorded 9.9 million internally displaced people in Sudan’s 18 states this week. Before the start of the recent conflict in April 2023, this North-East African country recorded 2.8 million displaced people, according to the same Source.
In more than a year, 7.1 million displaced people have joined the internally displaced persons sites. More than half of the displaced people are women and more than a quarter are children under five.
“Imagine a city the size of London being moved. That’s what it looks like, but it’s happening with the constant threat of crossfire, with famine, disease, and brutal ethnic and gender-based violence.”declared in a press release, Amy Pope, Director General of the IOM, quoted on the UN website.
In total, some 12 million people have been forced to flee their homes in Sudan, and more than 2 million have crossed borders into neighboring countries, mainly Chad, South Sudan and Egypt.
After years of protracted crisis, a full-scale civil war broke out in mid-April 2023 when heavy fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out in the capital Khartoum and are rapidly expanding across the entire immense country, which has nearly 50 million inhabitants.
The brutality and intensity of the war are relentless, and there are reports of serious human rights violations, including ethnic violence, rape and gang rape used as tools of war, according to the same Source, deploring that nearly 70% of people forced to move in Sudan are now trying to survive in places threatened by famine.
“Access to humanitarian aid is irregular, if not non-existent. The upcoming rainy season will complicate the situation and could lead to climate-related disasters and the spread of diseases”further warned the IOM, taken up on “UN News”.
