GENEVA: Funding cuts are driving an entire generation of children in Sudan to the brink of irreversible harm as support is scaled back and malnutrition cases persist across the country, the UN children’s agency said on Tuesday.
UNHCR and other UN agencies face one of the worst funding crises in decades, compounded by US and other donor states’ decisions to slash foreign aid funding.
“Children have limited access to safe water, food, health care. Malnutrition is rife, and many good children are reduced to just skin, bones,” said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s Representative in Sudan, speaking via video link from Port Sudan.
Sudan’s conflict between the army and rival Rapid Support Forces has displaced millions and split the country into rival zones of control with the RSF still deeply embedded in western Sudan.
Several areas to the south of Sudan’s capital Khartoum are at risk of famine, the World Food Programme said in July.
Children were being cut off from life-saving services due to funding cuts, while the scale of need is staggering, UNICEF said.
“With recent funding cuts, many of our partners in Khartoum and elsewhere have been forced to scale back... We are being stretched to the limit across Sudan, with children dying of hunger,” Yett said.
“We on the verge of irreversible damage being done to an entire generation of children in Sudan.”
Only 23 percent of the 4.6 billion dollar global humanitarian response plan for Sudan has been funded, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Access to areas in need also continues to be a challenge, with some roads rendered inaccessible due to the rainy season, hampering aid delivery efforts, UNICEF said. Other areas continue to be under siege, such as Al-Fashir.
“It has been one year since famine was confirmed in ZamZam camp and no food has reached this area. Al-Fashir remains under siege. We need that access now,” said Jens Laerke of OCHA.
Funding cuts drive Sudan’s children to the brink of irreversible harm, UNICEF says
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Funding cuts drive Sudan’s children to the brink of irreversible harm, UNICEF says
- UNHCR and other UN agencies face one of the worst funding crises in decades, compounded by US and other donor states’ decisions to slash foreign aid funding
- Children were being cut off from life-saving services due to funding cuts, while the scale of need is staggering, UNICEF said
US lawmakers press Israel to probe strike on reporters in Lebanon
- “The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said
- Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured
WASHINGTON: Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.
The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.
The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.
The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.
“With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.
“The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured.
“But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.”
“We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.”
