MADRID 12 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The blockade that the Sudanese paramilitaries have been carrying out for months on the Zamzam displaced persons camp, in the state of North Darfur (west of the country) has forced the suspension of the activities of the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to care for more of 5,000 malnourished children in the facility, the scene of the first officially declared famine in the world in seven years.
MSF’s director of emergency operations, Michel-Olivier Lacharité, has warned that the organization urgently needs the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group that has been fighting against the country’s Army since April last year in a war that has almost completely devastated Sudan, lift the block so that the more than 400,000 displaced people in the camp, including children, “receive a massive supply of food and medicine.”
In its statement, MSF states that 2,900 children affected by the suspension, more than half of the total, suffer from severe acute malnutrition in the middle of one of the epicenters of the conflict due to intense clashes between the Army and paramilitaries in the state capital, The Fasher.
“In recent days we have seen some positive signs, with the arrival of trucks after months of almost total blockade around the camp. But the quantities are insufficient,” said Lacharité.
Sudan is currently the object of several aid programs from United Nations organizations, such as the UN Children’s Fund, which last weekend announced, for example, the arrival of 25 tons of aid to the country, but it arrives with a dropper because there is not a single place, outside the city of Port Sudan, that is not a theater of war.
“The parties in conflict seem to recognize the seriousness of the situation and are beginning to let the trucks arrive,” adds Lacharité before qualifying that, “for a massive response to happen,” aid agencies will also “have to significantly intensify their efforts and “All diplomatic actors negotiating with the parties in conflict will have to convince them to guarantee that this delivery of aid continues during the coming months.”
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