Fighting in Sudan traps victims of African conflicts in endless cycle of displacement

Smoke billows over buildings in Khartoum on May 1, 2023 as deadly clashes between rival generals' forces have entered their third week. (AFP)
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Updated 03 May 2023
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Fighting in Sudan traps victims of African conflicts in endless cycle of displacement

  • The UN expects nearly 600,000 Sudanese to flee to neighboring countries to escape the fighting
  • People entering South Sudan include a mix of nationalities in addition to South Sudanese refugees in Sudan

JUBA, South Sudan: Over the past two years, the world has been plagued by large-scale refugee crises, from Syria and Afghanistan to Ukraine and Myanmar. Last year, the UN estimated that over 100 million people worldwide were displaced. Now, the conflict between rival military factions in Sudan which began last month may see these numbers swell even further.

As of Tuesday — just over three weeks since deadly clashes broke out between Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces and Mohamed Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces militia — more than 100,000 people had poured into neighboring countries from Sudan in search of safety, according to the UN.

Kak Ruot Wakow, a peace-building coordinator for an NGO, recently fled from Khartoum on his employer’s vehicle and is currently staying in Paloch, a town in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state that has become a way station of sorts for people displaced by the fighting in Sudan.

“I didn’t see bodies, but I saw damaged tanks on the road. At the time I left Khartoum, the clashes were occurring not in all parts of the city but at the military bases,” he told Arab News from Paloch. Along the way, Ruot Wakow came across units of the Rapid Support Forces who fortunately allowed him to pass through.

He said in addition to South Sudanese, there were Ethiopians, Eritreans, Kenyans, Somalis, Congolese and Ugandans in the human tide moving in the direction of the Sudan-North Sudan border.




Sudanese refugees from the Tandelti area who crossed into Chad are seen on April 30, 2023. (AFP)

Similar events are unfolding at other exit points around Sudan. The scene in Port Sudan, a city in the east currently being swarmed by both Sudanese and foreign nationals looking for passage on a ship to Saudi Arabia and beyond, is a grim one. Thousands wait for days under tents in temperatures exceeding 40C, not knowing when, or if, they will manage to make it out of the country.

According to a member-state briefing in Geneva on Monday by UN Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees Raouf Mazou, the UN estimates that as many as 580,000 Sudanese may flee into South Sudan, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic and even into war-torn Libya.

At the end of last month, Sudanese nationals attempting to enter Egypt told the UK’s Guardian newspaper about chaotic scenes at the border, with immigration officials attempting to process the new arrivals who waited in the open air with little food and water.

Last week, Pierre Honnorat, director of the UN World Food Programme in Chad, told Reuters news agency that tens of thousands of Sudanese had crossed into the country to Sudan’s west, and that the WFP expected more waves to arrive as the conflict escalates.

Thousands of Sudanese have flooded Chad’s eastern border villages, often outnumbering local villagers, and finding no shelter and little in the way of food or water.




Provision of water, sanitation and hygiene to a growing number of IDPs have become an alarming issue. (AN photo by Robert Bociaga)

The emerging humanitarian crisis is compounded by Sudan’s already large refugee burden. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees or UNHCR, Sudan hosts more than a million refugees and is home to over 3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs).

A large number of those fleeing south are actually experiencing a second displacement back to their country of origin: UN statistics show that 800,000 South Sudanese refugees live in Sudan.

The return of tens of thousands of them to South Sudan is raising the specter of a humanitarian disaster. Last year, South Sudan’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management reported that 1.6 million of the country’s 11.7 million population belonged to the category of IDPs.




Jebel IDP camp: With approximately 1.6 South Sudanese being internally displaced, the fighting in Sudan only aggravates the situation. (AN photo by Robert Bociaga)

The UNHCR has mobilized resources to assist those who have fled Sudan, including an estimated 9,000 Sudanese nationals who have arrived in South Sudan’s Renk county alone. The South Sudanese government has also deployed personnel to the Sudan border to receive fleeing citizens.

According to Maj. Gen. Charles Machieng Kuol, secretary of South Sudan’s Joint Defense Board, the northern region of South Sudan is the most affected, with a majority of the new arrivals heading to the country’s capital, Juba. “Most of (the) displaced are heading to Juba, by road, air or water,” he told Arab News.

Ruot Wakow, the NGO employee, said many South Sudanese were traveling to Sudan’s White Nile state by bus before embarking on the journey to South Sudan. According to him, the local community does not have the capacity to help the population in transit as the numbers are huge and impossible to monitor.

 

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Currently, repatriation of South Sudanese along this route is happening in two batches every day, which is not enough, Ruot Wakow said. “People mostly want to go to Juba as this is the only corridor to reach other places. The risk rises if one travels by boat owing to the lack of security.”

Although the South Sudanese government has allocated a sum of money equivalent to $7.6 million to assist those returning from Sudan, thousands of returnees are still stranded in northern Upper Nile, lacking access to basic necessities.




Catastrophic floods in South Sudan make the movement of people fleeing the conflict much harder. (AN photo by Robert Bociaga)

“On the ground, I did not see any support except from IOM (International Organization for Migration) and UNHCR, who provided some buses and ferries to evacuate people from the South Sudan border to Paloch,” Ruot Wakow said.

He said the new arrivals complained of lack of proper shelter and disease. “There are now some cases of cholera because of sanitation issues and the heavy rains. The accommodation situation is horrible,” he said.

Indeed, those lucky enough to make it to South Sudan quickly realize that they face a new set of hardships, including a lack of access to basic necessities such as food, water and shelter. The massive influx is putting a strain on resources and infrastructure, prompting some recent arrivals to move across another border to Uganda.

“People are moving from here to Uganda because of the difficulties that are facing them,” Kam William, an IDP from South Sudan’s northern region, told Arab News. “The World Food Programme has stopped supplying here in Juba, so there is no food. There is nothing; it is actually very difficult. Here, there is no money.”

The situation is made even more difficult by prolonged flooding in large parts of South Sudan. The natural disaster has forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, making it even more challenging for aid organizations to provide assistance to those in need.

“I got here when the war broke out in Bentiu. I came by boat,” Christ Yoany Kuany, a pastoralist who fled to Juba, told Arab News. “Life there is very difficult. The area has experienced very heavy flooding for the last three years. I lost 100 cows in Bentiu. All the remaining cows died of diseases.”

In some cases, communities have clashed over access to resources, leading to violence and displacement. The situation is particularly difficult in areas where the government and aid organizations have limited access, which makes it harder to provide support and assistance to those affected by the violence.

The fighting in Sudan also has the potential to contribute to existing inter-communal tensions in South Sudan. Some of the people fleeing Sudan are likely to bring with them longstanding ethnic and political rivalries, which could fuel conflicts in their new communities.

“This is our home, our country,” James Deng, a South Sudanese currently living in an IDP camp in Juba’s Jebel area, told Arab News. “And yet, we have nowhere to go. Here, we have so many diseases.”

 

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The situation is particularly dire in Juba’s Mangateen IDP camp, which has been submerged by heavy rains, leaving thousands of displaced people without shelter or access to basic necessities. The lack of resources and support has left many people vulnerable to disease, malnutrition and other health risks.

The situation in South Sudan will definitely get worse if the flow of people out of Sudan turns into a human tide. Abdou Dieng, the UN’s acting resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, gave warning on Monday that millions of Sudanese are in need of immediate assistance and millions more are confined to their homes, unable to access basic necessities.

Many health facilities have been forced to close while those that are still operating face challenges, including shortages of medical supplies and blood stocks, he added.

Officials from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 16 million people in Sudan, a third of the population, are in need of assistance, and 3.7 million, mainly from Darfur province, have been displaced from their homes since the fighting began on April 15.

 


Lebanese PM to visit Syria, discuss disappearance of prisoners

Updated 13 April 2025
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Lebanese PM to visit Syria, discuss disappearance of prisoners

  • Nawaf Salam lays wreath at Martyrs’ Monument in Beirut to commemorate 50th anniversary of Lebanese Civil War

LONDON: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam is scheduled to visit the Syrian Arab Republic on Monday to discuss common interests with the new leadership in Damascus.

It will be Salam’s first visit to Syria since he formed a government in February, and he is scheduled to discuss the issue of Lebanese citizens who disappeared in Syrian prisons during the Bashar Assad regime that collapsed in December. It has been reported that 622 Lebanese nationals remain forcibly disappeared in Syrian prisons.

“I hope to return with good news about those missing in Syria, and I will update the Lebanese people on this issue tomorrow,” Salam said, according to the National News Agency.

Salam laid a wreath at the Martyrs’ Monument in Beirut on Sunday to commemorate the anniversary of April 13, the date when Lebanon’s Civil War began in 1975.

Salam wrote on X: “We pause not to reopen wounds, but to recall lessons that must never be forgotten. All victories were false, and all parties (from the war) emerged as losers.”

He added: “There can be no true state unless legitimate armed forces have the exclusive right to bear arms.”


Aid worker missing after deadly attack on colleagues is held by Israel, ICRC says

PRCS paramedic Assad Al-Nsasrah is being held in an Israeli place of detention. (@PalestineRCS)
Updated 13 April 2025
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Aid worker missing after deadly attack on colleagues is held by Israel, ICRC says

  • PRCS demanded the immediate release of Nsasrah, who it said was “forcibly abducted” while carrying out humanitarian duties

CAIRO: A Palestinian Red Crescent staff member who went missing in late March when 15 humanitarian workers were killed by Israeli fire is being detained by Israeli authorities, the rescue service and the Red Cross said on Sunday.
Hisham Mhana, the spokesperson for the ICRC in Gaza, confirmed to Reuters that it had received information that the Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedic Assad Al-Nsasrah was being held in an Israeli place of detention.
“As per standard practice, we informed the families immediately. In this case, we also informed the Palestine Red Crescent Society as they have special standing as a partner of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement,” he said.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment.
Mhana said the ICRC has not been granted access to Nsasrah, who until Sunday had been declared missing, and also has not been able to visit any of the Palestinian detainees and prisoners in Israeli jails since October 7, 2023.
In a post on X, The PRCS demanded the immediate release of Nsasrah, who it said was “forcibly abducted” while carrying out humanitarian duties.
It added that Nsasrah and his colleagues came under heavy gunfire, which led to the killing of eight of them in a “grave violation” of international humanitarian law.
The bodies of 15 emergency and aid workers from the Red Crescent, the Civil Emergency Service and the UN were found buried in a mass grave in southern Gaza in March.
The UN and the Red Crescent accused Israeli forces of killing them after they were dispatched to respond to reports of injuries from Israeli airstrikes.
The Israeli military referred Reuters to its statement from Monday, in which it said that a thorough inquiry into the incident was still underway and that it would provide further details only once the investigation is complete.
It said that a preliminary inquiry indicated that “the troops opened fire due to a perceived threat following a previous encounter in the area, and that six of the individuals killed in the incident were identified as Hamas terrorists.”
The Israeli military has provided no evidence of how it determined that the six were Hamas militants, and the Islamist faction has rejected the accusation.
The only known survivor of the incident, PRCS paramedic Munther Abed, said soldiers had opened fire on clearly marked emergency response vehicles.


Moroccans demonstrate in support of Palestinians

Updated 13 April 2025
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Moroccans demonstrate in support of Palestinians

  • Demonstrators marched through the streets of Rabat under pouring rain in response to a call from the National Action Group for Palestine

RABAT: Several thousand people demonstrated in Morocco’s capital on Sunday to show support for Palestinians in war-torn Gaza.
Under pouring rain, demonstrators marched through the streets of Rabat in response to a call from the National Action Group for Palestine, a coalition of several political organizations, including the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD).
“The Moroccans are with Gaza,” said the principal of a private school in Rabat who spoke to AFP.
The North African kingdom has officially called for “the immediate, complete and permanent halt to the Israeli war on Gaza,” but has not publicly discussed reversing the official establishment of ties with Israel in 2020 as part of the US-led Abraham Accords.
The latest protest followed another large rally held a week earlier, part of a spate of demonstrations across the country since the Israeli army resumed its offensive on March 18 against the Islamist group Hamas after a two-month truce in Gaza.


Israel denies entry to Jerusalem for Palestinian Christians marking Palm Sunday

Updated 13 April 2025
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Israel denies entry to Jerusalem for Palestinian Christians marking Palm Sunday

  • Israeli restrictions at checkpoints around Jerusalem require Palestinians to obtain security permits to access religious sites
  • Only 6,000 permits were issued this year to the West Bank’s 50,000 Christians

LONDON: Israeli authorities prevented Palestinian Christian worshippers from entering Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank to participate in Palm Sunday.

Israeli authorities imposed strict restrictions on Jerusalem over the weekend, limiting the access of Palestinian Christians to the city, the Wafa news agency reported.

Only a limited number of worshippers, primarily residents of Jerusalem and Palestinian citizens of Israel, were able to attend religious services at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Wafa added.

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week leading up to Easter. It commemorates the entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem and is observed by Eastern and Western Christian churches.

On Sunday, Patriarch Theophilos III of the Greek Orthodox Church and Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa led liturgies attended by the clergy and a small group of worshipers.

Israeli restrictions at checkpoints around Jerusalem require Palestinians — Muslim and Christian — to obtain permits to access religious sites, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Father Ibrahim Faltas, Vicar of the Custody of the Holy Land, noted that only 6,000 permits were issued this year to the West Bank’s 50,000 Christians. Permit issuance requires a security clearance and often asks that applicants download a mobile application managed by Israeli authorities.

“This is the second consecutive year that only a small number of pilgrims are able to participate in Holy Week and Easter celebrations in Jerusalem due to the ongoing conflict (in Gaza),” Faltas told Wafa.

“Churches would continue to pray for peace, justice, and freedom for all people in the Holy Land,” he added.

The Catholic Palm Sunday procession took place on Sunday afternoon, starting from Jerusalem's Church of Bethphage and ending at the Church of Saint Anne.

Christians gathered for services at the Holy Family Catholic Church and Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing Israeli attacks since late 2023. In the West Bank, Palm Sunday services were held in churches throughout Bethlehem, Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin.


Syrian President Sharaa heads to UAE on official visit - SANA

Updated 13 April 2025
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Syrian President Sharaa heads to UAE on official visit - SANA

CAIRO: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa will travel to the United Arab Emirates for his second visit to a Gulf state as president on Sunday, Syria's official news agency reported.
He will be accompanied by foreign minister Assad al-Shibani, who visited the UAE earlier this year.
They are expected to discuss issues of mutual interest, the SANA state news agency reported.
Sharaa visited Saudi Arabia in February on his first foreign trip since assuming the presidency in January.
His visit to the UAE comes as the new Syrian leadership attempts to strengthen ties with Arab and Western leaders following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December at the hands of Sharaa's Sunni Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

 

(With Reuters)