The International Organization for Migration says more than 14 million people have been forced to leave their homes due to hunger, disease and rampant sexual violence.

The war in Sudan has displaced more than 14 million people and sexual violence is being seen on a “staggering” scale, United Nations agencies report.

Civil conflict has created the world’s largest displacement crisis this year, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan said in a new report that paramilitaries are preying on the female population.

IOM Director General Amy Pope described the situation in the war-torn African country as “catastrophic” in statements to the press.

Describing how women and girls are kidnapped into sexual slavery, the president of the fact-finding mission, Mohamed Chande Othman, said: “There is no safe place in Sudan now.”

Sudan’s cruel civil war erupted in April 2023 following a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the army’s former paramilitary allies, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which previously collaborated to overthrow former president Omar Al -Bashir in a 2019 army coup.

living nightmare

Since then, about 30 percent of the country’s total population has fled their homes, Pope said.

Of them, 11 million are internally displaced and 3.1 million have fled to neighboring countries, and the numbers continue to rise.

“This is a conflict situation that is not reported enough and we must pay more attention to it. “Millions of people are suffering and there is now a serious possibility that the conflict will cause regional instability from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea,” the Pope warned.

More than half of the displaced people are women and more than a quarter are children under five years of age.

Diseases are also spreading rapidly and 50 percent of the Sudanese people are struggling to obtain the minimum amount of food to survive, Pope said, adding that in northern Darfur famine conditions have already spread.

“There’s just no other way to say it. Hunger, disease and sexual violence are rampant. “For the people of Sudan, this is a living nightmare,” he said.

war crimes

Both the Sudanese army and the RSF and allied militias “have committed large-scale violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, many of which may constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity,” the mission concluded. research.

The report accused both sides of sexual violence, but said RSF was behind the “vast majority” of documented cases and was responsible for “large-scale sexual violence,” including “gang rapes and kidnapping and detention of victims in conditions that amount to sexual slavery.”

The report also said that the RSF and its allies had indulged in the “kidnapping, recruitment and use of children in hostilities,” amid systematic looting and pillage.

Last week, dozens of civilians were killed in fighting, displacing thousands more civilians in the central-eastern state of Gezira.

On Saturday, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) described the situation as “one of the most acute crises in living memory.”

The UN has also warned that around 25 million people – more than half of Sudan’s population – will likely face acute hunger by the end of the year.

The war has been marked by atrocities such as mass rape and “ethnic cleansing,” which the UN says amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, particularly in the western Darfur region. More than 24,000 people have died since the violence resumed.

Recent flooding in the Red Sea state of eastern Sudan has also caused displacement.

The Pope called for the humanitarian response to be “intensified”, saying only half of the aid to the country has been funded.

“We will not allow Sudan to be forgotten,” he said. “Your people need peace now.”