For a brief moment, the eyes of the world were on Sudan when the country was gripped by civil war last April after the fragile power-sharing agreement between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces collapsed. Since then, the brutal conflict has disappeared from the international agenda as quickly as it devastated the country.
On April 15, exactly one year after the calm was broken, a high-level conference on Sudan will take place in Paris. Hosted by France, Germany and the European Union, the event represents an important opportunity to refocus international attention on this forgotten crisis. Global leaders must seize it.
The violence has killed thousands, displaced millions and sparked a humanitarian catastrophe that threatens to plunge the entire African region into instability. Sudan’s implosion is exacerbating insurgencies in neighboring Sahel states and may create a zone of instability on the continent stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.
Harrowing attacks against civilians are the alarming hallmark of this conflict. These include arbitrary and ethnically motivated killings in Darfur and widespread sexual violence against women and girls. Hunger is also widespread. Together, these factors have created the world’s fastest-growing displacement crisis and largest displacement of children, at a staggering pace and scale.
In less than a year, 8.5 million people have been forced to leave their homes and more people are fleeing as conditions worsen. Nearly two million have fled across borders, most to Chad, South Sudan and Egypt, to escape the bloodshed. More than half of those seeking refuge are children. Neighboring countries have reached out to people in desperate need, but some are already buckling under the weight of their own humanitarian plight.
There is also a serious risk that the region could soon become the world’s worst hunger crisis. In Sudan, where food prices have risen more than 110 percent through February, nearly 18 million people are suffering acute hunger, while nearly seven million in South Sudan and three million in Chad are suffering the same fate – a total of nearly 28 million people.
In Sudan, famine is a real and dangerous possibility in the coming months. There are significant numbers of people suffering from extreme food insecurity – virtually one step away from famine – but 90 percent of them are trapped in areas largely inaccessible to humanitarian organizations. These include conflict hotspots such as Khartoum, the state of Gezira, the Kordofan states and the Darfur states.
The children in Sudan are feeling the cruel effects of this war most. Six-year-old Fatima, for example, who was displaced twice, first with her family before the fighting in Khartoum and then from Gezira to Kassala, longs for home, school and peace.
She is one of the nearly five million children who have been displaced and the 19 million who are deprived of education as schools are closed, teachers’ salaries are unpaid and budgets for school operations are lacking. The consequences of this shattered future will be felt for a generation.
The international community must act now to avert the impending regional catastrophe.
First, there must be a coordinated effort to ensure unhindered humanitarian access and the protection of civilians in Sudan. This includes local volunteer groups and women’s organizations that support survivors of sexual violence who are themselves targeted.
Despite the recent United Nations Security Council resolution calling for full humanitarian access, there is still no real progress on the ground. Operations to deliver relief supplies to vulnerable populations – across borders and battle lines – continue to be hampered. At the same time, humanitarian relief supplies and teams are victims of looting and attacks.
We need all parties to allow unhindered access and for all border crossings to be open, particularly those into the Darfur and Kordofan regions. It is now an urgent humanitarian need to create the space in which aid organizations can work effectively.
Second, the worsening crisis requires an adequately funded emergency response. Despite the enormous needs, the $2.7 billion joint humanitarian appeal for Sudan, which aims to provide life-saving assistance to nearly 15 million people, is only 6 percent funded.
Additional resources are also important to help refugees and returnees in surrounding countries. In South Sudan, three million acutely hungry people are currently not receiving food aid due to a lack of money. Meanwhile in Chad, only an urgent cash injection will prevent all 1.2 million refugees in the country and nearly three million Chadians from losing their rations later this month.
These are all urgently vulnerable people in need of international support and protection that our teams can access but can no longer afford to help. If these cuts are allowed, the resulting rise in hunger will only cause more suffering for those who have already lost so much and accelerate the region’s slide into instability and chaos.
The predictable result of continued underfunding in frontline asylum countries is that more people will feel forced to move – including attempting dangerous crossings across the Mediterranean.
Ultimately and fundamentally, this forgotten crisis requires sustainable political solutions to end the fighting that is tearing Sudan apart and destabilizing its neighbors.
The Paris Conference is a crucial opportunity to launch a new diplomatic initiative aimed at ending violence, averting famine and restoring the fragile balance of the entire region. We call on the international community not to let this go to waste.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.