David Lammy says war victims are ‘luxurious’ after coming face-to-face

Every day the family flees war and famine in Sudan along dry, dusty roads to Chad, a scene that clearly shook Britain’s foreign secretary.

David Lammy from the Sweltering Sun visited the Adré Border Post on Friday to see first-hand the effects of Sudan’s civil war when the army and its former allies, the Ameripallity Rapid Support Forces (RSF), fell.

Those who make it over the border are often distraught and desperate to make sure their relatives make it safely.

“These are some of the most horrific things I have ever heard or seen in my life,” Lammy said.

“Overwhelmingly, what I saw in Chad, on the border with Sudan, was women and children running for their lives – stories of widespread slaughter, mutilations, burning, sexual violence, children, famine, starvation – unbelievable. “No trouble.”

The Foreign Minister saw dozens of women wrapped in light and multi-colored shawls and children of different ages crossing horse-drawn carts.

They appeared to be sitting in bags carrying the few belongings they could bring with them on their long journey to safety.

“Alhamdulillah” means “Praise be to God,” says Halima Abdalla when asked how she made it across borders.

The 28-year-old is relieved despite the tragedy of losing one of his children when he fled the western region of Sudan, which has suffered some of the deadliest violence in the past 21 months. Perpetrated by RSF.

“I went to El-Geneina for the first time, but I had to run back when the fighting broke out,” she said, explaining how she was separated from her husband and two other children.

Aid workers in Adré say they tried to reunite families across the border.

“Some mothers said they had to choose which children would run with them because they could not carry them all at once,” an aid worker told the BBC.

Some abandoned children are brought across the border by humanitarian workers and placed in foster care, and efforts are made to find them families.

Standing on the Chadian side of the border, Lammy spoke with fleeing families and helped the workers who were receiving them.

After meeting the refugees he told the BBC:

“I was sitting with a woman who just showed burn marks. She was going up and down her arms to the soldiers. Pain on the end.”

But he revealed what he described as a “hierarchy of conflict” that appears to have left Sudan at the bottom despite it currently being the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Last November, the British Foreign Secretary led a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the UN Security Council, which was rejected by Russia.

“How can you deny the predicament that is happening here?” he asked.

He told the BBC he now plans to convene a meeting in London of Sudan’s neighbors such as Chad and Egypt, as well as other “international partners to broker peace”.

Several attempts at peace talks led by the United States and Saudi Arabia have failed to produce a solution to the conflict.

After mediation broke down, the United States subsequently imposed sanctions on generals leading both sides of the war. It also determined that the RSF and its allies had committed genocide.

More than 12 million people have fled their homes since fighting began in April 2023.

Caught in the middle of the bitter fighting are more than 50 million civilians, half of whom are desperately in need of humanitarian aid, according to UN agencies.

Malnutrition rates are among the highest in the world. At Adré’s tent clinic, health workers measure the circumference of six-month-old Rasma Ibrahim’s upper arm.

Color-coded tape goes to red. The effects of her health condition could last her life. One of Adré’s seven children is malnourished.

Britain will continue to push for a ceasefire, Lammy said.

Aid has already been doubled to 200 million pounds ($250 million) and calls are being made for other donor countries to step up.

But aid agencies are concerned about newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 90-day freeze on foreign aid.

Confusion over support from one of the world’s largest donors will undoubtedly have catastrophic consequences for a crisis like Sudan. The United Nations is already struggling to meet its goals for needed aid funding.

There has been an appeal for $2.7 billion (£2.2 billion) to support Sudan in 2024, but only 57% of this money has been provided.

At Adré’s food distribution center, sacks of split yellow peas, millet, sorghum and boxes of cooking oil and other supplies were neatly arranged on tarpaulins as families queued at a nearby refugee camp.

The cries of infants tied in shawls fill the backs of waiting mothers. One person, a family, was called to collect rations.

One man helps lift a sack of dry food onto another’s shoulder, and he buzzes as he heads back to his temporary home.

According to local volunteers, Adre’s population was about 40,000 before the start of Sudan’s civil war and has now grown more than five times.

Refugees here are among the lucky few. Across the border in Darfur, famine was declared in August in the Zamzam camp near the city of El-Fasher.

On Friday, devastating news emerged that one of El-Fasher’s last functioning hospitals had been struck by a drone, killing at least 30 people. Local authorities said an RSF paramilitary was the culprit but did not respond to the claims.

In December, the Unbacked Famine Review Committee reported that the famine had spread from Darfur to Abu Shouk and Al-Salam Camps and to more areas as part of South Kordofan State. He said it had spread.

The famine spread despite the reopening of the Adré border, which had been closed by the military on suspicion of being used to transport weapons to rivals.

As we left the border, three or four trucks with UN World Food Program Banners slowly drove down the dusty road crossing into Sudan.

They will deliver much-needed aid across borders to villages, towns and wigger camps. But it’s still not enough.

“We are in this huge crisis now and we have to wake up,” Lammy said.