“A massive scale-up is needed more than ever before the rainy season” — MSF Warns European Parliament on Sudan Crisis

Distinguished Members of the European Parliament,

The war in Sudan is a war on people. So I would like to start with the words of a 27-year-old patient from Mornay, West Darfur: ‘[The war] started in 2023. [...] No one could go outside. If you [did], you would get raped or beaten. Then my house was burnt down, so my sister and I ran away. She was raped. When we arrived in Sharg Anil, we didn’t have a house. At night, people came to rape women and take everything. I heard some women being raped at night. The men were hiding in the toilets and [any] room they could close otherwise they would get killed. The women did not hide because it was just beating and rape for us, but the men would get killed’. Let me repeat the last part: ‘The women did not hide because it was just beating and rape for us, but the men would get killed’

Over the past two years, Sudan has been plagued by horrific violence, death and devastation.

Over the past two years, the warring parties have not only failed to protect civilians over and over again, but they have actively compounded their suffering.

Over the past two years, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces have repeatedly and indiscriminately bombed densely populated areas. The RSF has committed grave abuses including widespread sexual violence, mass killings, repeated attacks on medical facilities and looting of aid.

As a result of this unrelenting violence, the humanitarian needs are staggering. The health system has collapsed with only 20 to 30 percent of health facilities operational according to the World Health Organisation. Clinics have been looted, occupied and destroyed. Healthcare workers have been assaulted, threatened and killed. Millions are left without access to critical care. Violence has forced us, Doctors Without Borders, to take the heartbreaking decision to suspend critical operations on multiple occasions in Khartoum, Al Jazeera and Darfur States.

Wherever you look in Sudan, you will find needs — overwhelming, urgent, and unmet. Of the country’s 50 million people before the war, 60 per cent need humanitarian aid today. The population is facing multiple health crises. We treat war-wounded and survivors of sexual violence. Malnutrition rates are beyond alarming. Half of the population faces acute food insecurity and according to the UN, Sudan is the only place in the world where famine has been officially declared in multiple locations. Pregnant women and children die in shocking numbers. Deadly diseases like cholera and measles spread in multiple locations.

Since April 2023, more than 1.7 million people have sought medical consultations at facilities MSF supports. More than 32,000 people have been admitted in our emergency wards.

Against this backdrop, the humanitarian response is nowhere close to being commensurate with the needs. It remains hindered by systematic obstructions by the warrying parties with regards to humanitarian access. It is also critically underfunded. The upcoming rainy season threatens to make an already catastrophic situation even worse. Every year, the rain severs supply routes, floods entire regions, and cuts off people, especially in Darfur at a time when the hunger gap peaks and malnutrition and malaria spike.

Distinguished members of the European Parliament, on April 11, the Rapid Support Forces launched a brutal large-scale offensive on Zamzam camp, Sudan’s largest displacement camp hosting above half a million people in North Darfur. Hundreds of civilians were killed. So were 9 aid workers of Relief international. Hundreds of thousands were forced to flee. Many for a second time.

In just three days, between April 12 and April 15, our teams witnessed the arrival of around 25,000 people in Tawila, 60 kilometres away. They arrived in dire conditions in an advanced state of dehydration and exhaustion. Some children were ‘literally dying of thirst’. Our overwhelmed medical teams treated over 170 people for gunshot and blast wounds, 40% of them women and girls. We also treated survivors of sexual violence. Survivors described horrific violence: almost everyone lost a family member.

Even before this, the situation in Tawila was dire. In December 2024, MSF screened more than 9,500 children under five: 35.5% were suffering from global acute malnutrition, twice over the emergency threshold.

In El Fasher, the neighbouring capital city of North Darfur, conditions are also desperate. The city has been under siege since May 2024. Thousands fleeing Zamzam remain trapped there, without access to aid and exposed to constant violence.

Distinguished Members of the European Parliament, MSF calls the European Parliament to:

1. Urge the EU and its member states to urgently use their influence to engage with the warrying parties and states with influence on both sides to:

o Cease all attacks on civilians and health facilities

o Immediately and unconditionally lift all blockades and bureaucratic and administrative impediments pertaining to humanitarian access.

o Grant immediate unhindered humanitarian access to deliver critical humanitarian aid through all possible routes including across borders and frontlines. Without a serious commitment to overcome the political, financial, logistical and security barriers that hinder last-mile delivery of aid, countless lives will remain beyond the reach of help.

2. Urge the EU and member states to call for an immediate and massive scale up, which is needed more than ever before the rainy season.

3. Increase funding for the humanitarian response in Sudan including for local responders and for the humanitarian response in neighboring countries.

Distinguished members of the European Parliament, today’s biggest obstacle for a humanitarian scale up is political will, including from the European Union.

People of Sudan have endured this horror for two years too long. They cannot and should not any longer.

Thank you.