Sudan: UN warns of conflict spreading to other parts of the country

A deputy to the UN secretary-general for Africa told the Security Council on Thursday that the conflict in Sudan was spreading to other parts of the country, which already has the highest number of displaced people in the world.

The Ghanaian diplomat, Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, alarmed the Council at a non-voting meeting that "Sudan is facing a convergence of worsening humanitarian calamities and a catastrophic human rights crisis".

After nearly seven months of conflict between the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, "almost 25 million people in Sudan are now in need of humanitarian aid", said the UN's head of humanitarian operations, Martin Griffiths, on Monday.

Launched on April 15, the war between the army and paramilitaries has left more than 9,000 people dead, according to an estimate by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), which is widely considered to be an underestimate.

"Outside Darfur, deadly clashes have continued in Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri (...) and also persist in South Kordofan, while the situation remains tense around El-Obeid and North Kordofan", Akyaa Pobee detailed.

But "hostilities have spilt over into new regions, such as the states of Gezira, White Nile and West Kordofan, exposing more civilians and humanitarian workers" to the risk of violence, expressed the concern of the representative of UN chief Antonio Guterres.

She reiterated that "Sudan now represents the world's largest crisis in terms of population displacement, with 7.1 million people displaced".And the UN had only been able to provide "vital aid" to 4.1 million Sudanese, or "only 22% of the people in need identified by humanitarian organisations in 2023", she pointed out.

On Tuesday, Mr Guterres' spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, denounced "large-scale violence" against the Massalit ethnic group in Darfur and an "escalation" of inter-ethnic violence in this east African country. 

The RSF intends to reign supreme in Darfur, where the UN fears a possible new "genocide" following that carried out in the early 2000s by the Janjaweed on behalf of the then dictator Omar al-Bashir.