The ICRC welcomes the agreement signed between the Sudanese Army and the RSF paramilitaries

“It is imperative to transform this promise into concrete actions on the ground,” says the NGO

May 12. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) received this Friday “with pleasure” the preliminary agreement signed in the Saudi city of Jeddah between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for the cessation of hostilities in the African country .

“We hope that the agreement signed in Jeddah will improve the security situation and thus allow us to expand our emergency response. Facilitating humanitarian work is an obligation under Humanitarian Law, as well as a matter of life and death. The urgency is every big day,” said the head of the ICRC delegation in Sudan, Alfonso Verdú Pérez.

The NGO has affirmed that “it is imperative to transform this promise into concrete actions on the ground” and has indicated that “the incessant violence and generalized insecurity” in the country “has made it difficult” to provide aid to the population. “As a humanitarian worker, it frustrates me to see such suffering and not be able to provide assistance to the extent and speed that is needed,” said Verdú Pérez.

In this sense, the organization has denounced in a statement “direct threats and attacks” against humanitarian and health workers in the country, including volunteers from the Sudanese Red Crescent, which has prevented the launch of the emergency response operation to the “required level”.

However, the NGO has specified that it has been able to make donations to three hospitals, as well as deliver mortuary bags to volunteers from the Sudanese Red Crescent. “There is still a lot of urgent humanitarian work to be done,” he reiterated.

In this “preliminary agreement of principles”, both parties would have agreed to allow the passage of humanitarian aid, as well as to facilitate the movement of civilians fleeing the hottest areas of the conflict to safer places.

The hostilities broke out on April 15 in the context of an increase in tensions around the integration of the RSF into the Armed Forces, a key part of an agreement signed in December to form a new civilian government and reactivate the transition open after the 2019 overthrow of Omar Hasan al Bashir, damaged by the October 2021 coup, in which the prime minister of unity, Abdallah Hamdok, was overthrown.