Food aid heads for Sudan’s Darfur region after six-month closure, says UN and US
Talks in Switzerland to secure a ceasefire deal between Sudan’s two warring parties failed this week after the Sudanese military did not send a delegation. But international negotiators succeeded in getting access for humanitarian aid to the country’s conflict and famine-stricken Darfur region, enabling food trucks to make their way to the Zamzam and other camps for displaced people, the UN and US said Friday.
Food aid is on the way to an area of Sudan facing famine amid the northeast African country's grinding conflict, a group of countries and the United Nations said in a joint statement Friday.
The statement came at the conclusion of more than a week of talks in Geneva, Switzerland, aimed at calming the conflict, but that failed to bring together the two warring sides. The talks were convened as the country's humanitarian crisis worsens.
Last month, global experts said that starvation at a massive camp for displaced people in the Sudanese region of Darfur had grown into famine. And about 25.6 million people — more than half of Sudan’s population — will face acute hunger, experts from the Famine Review Committee warned.
International experts use set criteria to confirm famines. Formal declarations of famines are usually made by the countries themselves or the United Nations.
Aid workers were last able to get humanitarian relief to the trapped civilians at the camps in Darfur in April.
(AP)
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