Aid workers ‘choose who to save’

HUMANITARIAN workers in Sudan’s Darfur are being forced to “choose who to save” due to insufficient resources, said aid group Handicap International’s logistics chief Jerome Bertrand.

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A SUDANESE girl who fled El-Fasher lines up with other women to receive a free meal at the Al-Afad camp for displaced people in Al-Dabba, northern Sudan, on Thursday.

(AFP)

After more than two years of war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), needs have reached overwhelming levels, Bertrand said. “It is an inhumane dilemma that humanitarian actors have to face and it goes completely against our values,” he said.

Bertrand said teams were prioritising children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers “in the hope that others can hold on”.

The conflict in Sudan, which began in April 2023, has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 12 million, creating what the UN describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis. Conditions in Darfur have deteriorated sharply since the RSF seized the North Darfur capital of El-Fasher, the army's last stronghold in the region, on October 26.

The UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) confirmed this month El-Fasher was facing famine, which has raged in its surrounding displacement camps for over a year.

Aid groups like Bertrand’s are scrambling to meet immense needs, with no functional infrastructure.