War-torn Sudan is at risk of becoming another failed state as civil society disintegrates due to the rise of armed groups, the head of a leading international aid agency has told the BBC.
As well as the two main fighting groups in Sudan – the army and the Rapid Support Forces – there are many small “tribal forces” who loot and “abuse” civilians, Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said.
“The groups are destroying their homes, killing their people,” he said.
Nineteen months have passed since a brutal power struggle between the army and the RSF, which has forced more than 10 million people to flee their homes and pushed the country to the brink of famine.
“Everything I have seen confirms that this is the biggest emergency we are facing, the biggest famine, the biggest migration problem,” said Mr Egeland, after a trip to Sudan.
In September, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that hunger in Sudan is “almost everywhere”.
Soup kitchens were forced to close due to lack of funding. Egeland said the lack of aid response means that the remaining aid sources are simply “slowing down deaths instead of stopping them.”
“The majority of Sudan is dying of hunger, they are dying of hunger,” he said, adding that hunger was used as a means of fighting.
Some food security experts fear that as many as 2.5 million people could starve to death by the end of this year.
Mr Egeland warned that the world is “absolutely failing Sudan” by not doing enough.
He told the BBC that if Europe wants to avoid a refugee crisis, it needs to invest in “aid, protection and peace in this part of the world”.
“It’s an unfunded project, even though it’s the biggest emergency in the world,” he said.
Thousands of people have been killed since the civil war began. Rights groups have also expressed fears that there may be ethnic cleansing as well genocide in Sudan.
Despite this, peace talks between the RSF and the military have been fruitless.
“The war will stop when these warlords feel they have more to lose by continuing to fight, rather than doing something sensible,” Egeland said.
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