4 million have fled since the start of the war... a tragic situation for Sudanese refugees

Moatinoon - Agencies
A spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stated today that the number of people who have fled Sudan since the start of the war has exceeded four million.

UNHCR spokesperson Eugene Byon said at a press conference in Geneva that this number reached this threshold on Monday, and that the scale of the displacement "threatens regional and global stability."

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) called for urgent aid to support Sudanese refugees fleeing to Chad. It stated that approximately 40,000 Sudanese refugees, who have arrived in refugee camps around Tina in eastern Chad since the end of April, now face harsh and overcrowded conditions and limited access to basic services.

The organizations report stated that many refugees are suffering from malnutrition and severe psychological distress due to the horrific violence in North Darfur and on the roads leading to Chad, and that the vast majority are women and children from El Fasher and the Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons.

The Tina temporary camp currently hosts more than 18,000 people, many of whom are sleeping on bare ground in temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius, without shelter, and with severely limited access to water and food, despite support from host communities.

Chad already hosts more than one million refugees, including more than 800,000 Sudanese who have arrived since the conflict began more than two years ago.

In Uganda, an earlier meeting of dozens of Sudanese refugees, the majority of whom are women, and representatives from the Ugandan Prime Ministers Office, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), revealed the increasing suffering refugees face in terms of housing, healthcare, education, employment difficulties, and violations of basic rights.