Sudan needs $150 million in aid to cope with Ethiopian refugees: UN
The United Nations (UN) says Sudan needs $150 million in aid to cope with rushing streams of Ethiopian refugees fleeing the conflict in their country’s Tigray region.
“Sudan needs $150 million for six months to provide these refugees water, shelter, and health services,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi at Um Raquba camp, some 80 kilometers from the Ethiopian border, on Saturday.
He urged “donors to provide Sudan with these resources as soon as they can.”
Tigray has been engulfed in bloody fighting since November 4, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the launch of military operations against the regional government there.
The announcement led to a dramatic escalation of a long-running feud between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the region’s ruling party, which dominated Ethiopian politics for almost three decades before the incumbent prime minister assumed power in 2018.
Abiy ordered the offensive on Tigray after rebel forces loyal to the TPLF launched deadly attacks on a pair of federal military camps in the region. He has also accused the party of defying his government and seeking to undermine it.
The fighting has forced more than 43,000 Ethiopian refugees so far to take refuge in one of the most impoverished regions of neighboring Sudan. Reports say that on a daily basis, between 500 and 600 refugees are pouring into the country.
Sudan is struggling with a deep economic crisis and has been going through a fragile transition since April 2019, when a military coup ended the 30-year dictatorship of president Omar al-Bashir.
Sudan’s official figures show that some 65 percent of the country’s nearly 42 million people live below the poverty line.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Grandi also expressed concern about the fate of tens of thousands of Eritrean refugees living in Ethiopia for decades.
“We don’t have access to them,” he said, calling on the Ethiopian government to authorize visits by the UN.
The Ethiopian military launched the final phase of its offensive to capture Mekelle, the regional capital of Tigray, on Saturday.
Debretsion Gebremichael, the head of the TPLF, has said the city, home to 500,000 people, is under “heavy bombardment.”
The UN says the conflict has so far displaced at least 20,000 Ethiopians.
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