GENEVA: Chief of Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric has expressed confidence that this week’s scheduled negotiations on the Sudan conflict will result in solid steps and remove hurdles blocking a ceasefire.
The United States last month invited Sudan’s warring parties to hold peace talks in Switzerland, more than a year after fighting started between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Spoljaric, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross said the situation in Sudan was a “humanitarian disaster.”
“We are not part of these talks, but I do hope that they will find agreements that will allow us to increase humanitarian assistance, that will allow us to have more access to affected populations, especially in the north of Darfur the situation is extremely concerning,” she told a press conference at the ICRC headquarters in Geneva.
She stressed very concrete humanitarian measures that will help build trust and will help remove some of the hurdles for a ceasefire deal.
War has intensified since April 2023 between the Sudanese regular army under Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
According to the United Nations, the conflict in Sudan has left tens of thousands dead and displaced more than 10 million people. A recent report said nearly 26 million people, are facing high levels of acute food insecurity.
“What we need is the parties to come together to agree on very concrete steps to ease these restrictions and to improve the security for us as humanitarians to operate,” Spoljaric said.
Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has called upon the countries to increase their donations in response to the world’s largest displacement crisis in Sudan.
Mohamed Refaat, who leads the IOM’s Sudan mission, told a briefing that the aid agency has received just 21 percent of the support it needs to provide aid to the Sudanese, already affected by conflict and now facing disease, hunger and floods.
“The international community is not doing enough,” Refaat said.
“Without an immediate massive and coordinated global response, we risk witnessing tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the coming months,” he added.
