Eleven million people have been forced to flee the fighting in Sudan. Hunger, death, and lack of healthcare are hitting the population hard, and the UN is warning of an "epidemic" of sexual violence. Despite all the catastrophic reports, the aid efforts are grossly underfunded.
Most Sudanese refugees remain in the country, but a couple of million have made their way to neighboring countries. Many young people have no visions of returning to their homeland, they have set their sights on Europe, says NRC's general director Jan Egeland.
He has just returned from Sudan, where he met regional leaders, but also many who have been hard hit by the war. In the neighboring country of Chad, he met, among others, young people from the Darfur region in Sudan.
I asked them if they plan to return to Darfur and rebuild homes and workplaces there, or if they want to continue in Chad. They said their future is in Europe.
Message to politicians
Jan Egeland sees it as a message to the Swedish parliament, the Norwegian parliament, the German federal parliament, and others who handle budget issues.
If they want to avoid a larger migration and even greater expenses for barbed wire and walls around Europe, then we must invest in humanitarian protection and aid, education, and livelihoods for these young people.
NRC has around 400 aid workers in Sudan and subsidizes, among other things, hundreds of local bakeries, a project that will grow in the future. There, bread can be baked for half a million people across Darfur and eventually other regions as well. But even if bread is an important addition, it does not mean that the war will end.
The question now is: are we putting off the suffering or solving the crisis?
"Short-term strategy"
He wants to see more intense work with local, regional, and national peace initiatives, and more pressure on those who provide weapons and support to the warring parties.
The warlords do not need more weapons, what is needed is food and resources for the children, says Egeland.
I believe that the trend in the world with America first and Europe first and me first is a short-term strategy, it leads to a more unstable world. It loses everyone, not just economically and security-wise, but also humanly. We cannot live well in a world where so many go hungry.
The fighting in Sudan broke out in April 2023 and is between arch-rivals General Abd al-Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who is the leader of the Rapid Support Forces, RSF.
RSF was formed in 2013 from the janjaweed militias, the armed groups that Sudan's former dictator Omar al-Bashir had sent out to spread terror and quell the uprising in conflict-ridden Darfur in western Sudan in the early 2000s.
Both parties have repeatedly been accused of war crimes.
Sources: AFP and AP
