The Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP), Cindy McCain, warned on Sunday about the worsening humanitarian crisis in Sudan.
In an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” McCain stressed the importance of “safe and unrestricted access” for the organization to deliver food to the war-torn country.
“Sudan has the real possibility of becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis,” McCain said. “We can’t bring food in – we can barely bring food in – we’re certainly not getting it on a large scale, and you see the results of what can happen if people aren’t fed.”
McCain noted that the situation will likely get more difficult in the coming months, saying, “We are also entering the lean season, which makes it often very difficult for our trucks to operate if they can get in at all.”
“We need more crossings. We need safe and unrestricted access,” she said, comparing the obstacles in Sudan to those the WFP faces in delivering food to Gazans.
“The bottom line is that people will starve to death if we don’t get there,” she added.
McCain highlighted the potential consequences if the world ignores the crisis unfolding in Sudan.
“Sudan is a forgotten crisis and its implications, being a destabilizing factor in that region, could have catastrophic effects as they progress,” she said. “So it’s really imperative that we open the crossings, that we have safe access, that the various factions understand that we are, you know, we are humanitarians and we need to have access.”
PAM has I’ve been calling for “the parties to the conflict to grant unrestricted access to crisis-hit communities” as hunger increases in the region. Around 18 million people face “acute hunger” in Sudan, including five million who are at “emergency hunger levels”.
WFP said nearly 90 percent of people in “emergency” levels are in areas where access is “extremely limited due to intense fighting and restrictions.”
WFP announced Thursday an expansion of its emergency food and nutrition assistance in Sudan.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
