The United Nations (UN) is sounding the alarm over a rapidly deteriorating situation in the Darfur region of Sudan, where top officials warn some 800,000 civilians in the city of El Fasher are in “extreme and immediate danger” from escalating violence that threatens to unleash wider bloody intercommunal conflict.
In an urgent Friday briefing to the UN Security Council, political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo stated that clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and army-aligned Joint Protection Forces were nearing the North Darfur capital of El Fasher. She echoed grave warnings from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that “fighting in El Fasher could unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur.”
The spiralling violence in Darfur is an offshoot of the broader war that erupted across Sudan a year ago between the Sudanese army and the powerful RSF paramilitary group, creating the world’s largest displacement crisis. The UN estimates nearly 25 million people – half of Sudan’s population – are now in dire need of humanitarian aid, with 8 million forced to flee their homes.
UN aid operations director Edem Wosornu told the Security Council that the intensifying clashes imperilling El Fasher’s 800,000 residents “risk triggering further violence in other parts of Darfur – where more than 9 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.”
The stark warnings come just weeks after the UN’s global authority on food security issued an alert that immediate action is required “to prevent widespread death and total collapse of livelihoods and avert a catastrophic hunger crisis in Sudan.”
While international donors pledged over $2 billion in aid for the war-torn nation at a conference in Paris this week, humanitarian groups have raised concerns over access and safety issues hampering the delivery of crucial supplies to civilians trapped by the worsening violence.
With communal tensions in Darfur running high after years of conflict, the UN fears the latest surge in fighting could ignite broader ethnic strife in a region that has seen some of the worst atrocities during Sudan’s decades of civil wars and unrest. A concerted international effort may be the only way to prevent a new humanitarian catastrophe from unfolding.
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