The following news comment is attributable to ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric on two years of armed conflict in Sudan. President Spoljaric will speak at the High-Level Ministerial Meeting on Sudan in London on April 15th about the consequences of the conflict on civilians and what is at stake if violence continues unabated.
“Two years of ruinous civil war has been seared into the lives of millions of Sudanese. The conflict has flared across the country, engulfing rural areas and urban centres. Civilians are trapped in a relentless nightmare of death and destruction.
We have seen over the past two years an insidious pattern of dehumanization in how the war is being carried out. Civilians are killed and injured, their homes looted, and their livelihoods destroyed. Sexual violence is rampant and seeding trauma that will reverberate for generations. Humanitarian workers and first responders are deliberately attacked while carrying out their lifesaving work.
The conflict is made deadlier by intentional attacks on civilian infrastructure like hospitals, water stations, and power plants. If civilians are not killed in fighting, they could die because there is no functioning hospital, or because they don’t have access to safe drinking water.
The horrors inflicted on civilians in Sudan should never be seen as inevitable consequences of war. A ceasefire would give people desperately needed respite but without such a pause the laws of war still must be respected. Much of the suffering over the last two years would have been prevented had the rules of war been followed. Reductions in humanitarian funding are deepening this misery.
As the conflict enters its third year, I call on the parties to the conflict to honour the commitments they made in Jeddah to uphold international humanitarian law and take concrete steps today to protect civilians. To not do this only fuels more violence, more death, more destruction that Sudan—and the world—cannot afford.”
About the ICRC
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a neutral, impartial and independent organization with an exclusively humanitarian mandate that stems from the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It helps people around the world affected by armed conflict and other violence, doing everything it can to protect their lives and dignity and to relieve their suffering, often alongside its Red Cross and Red Crescent partners.
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