(CN) — After lobbying by the United States and the United Nations, the Sudanese army has agreed to stop blocking humanitarian aid into the war-torn Darfur region.
Sudan’s Foreign Ministry confirmed Wednesday that it had informed the United Nations it would allow aid to enter through border crossings via Chad and South Sudan.
According to African news outlets, the army-led government said it would allow access from Chad to El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, for “specified humanitarian aid.”
“This is a welcome step that will greatly facilitate U.N. and partner efforts to reach people in dire need of life-saving assistance,” Clementine Nkweta-Salami, a U.N. humanitarian coordinator, said in an online statement. “We are now liaising with relevant authorities and parties so that we can get our humanitarian convoys back on the road.”
Sudan has faced a mounting humanitarian and political crisis since fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary. The conflict — which began on the cusp of the country's Western-brokered transition to democracy in April 2023 — ostensibly concerns the integration of the paramilitary into the army.
The conflict has spiraled out of control in the past 11 months, decimating the capital Khartoum and spreading to other regions. At least 25 million people in the country of about 48 million are in need of humanitarian assistance.
The crisis is particularly dire in Darfur, where at least 2.3 million people have been displaced. Aid organizations have raised the alarm that a new genocide could occur in the region.
The paramilitary forces, which control most of Darfur, evolved out of the Janjaweed Arab militias. Those fighters were initially recruited to brutally suppress an uprising, culminating in the infamous genocide of the mid-2000s.
Last month, the army announced it would prohibit humanitarian assistance entering from Chad, which borders the Darfur region, in order to block aid from reaching RSF-controlled areas.
Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, spoke directly with army General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Tuesday to push for humanitarian access.
“Administrator Power stressed the need to reestablish cross-border access from Chad, remove bureaucratic impediments and ensure safe, sustained and unhindered humanitarian access for aid workers to urgently deliver life-saving assistance,” USAID spokesperson Jessica Jennings said.
The U.S. has been criticized for not giving enough attention to the crisis as it seeks to manage Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war against Hamas. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week appointed former U.S. Representative Tom Perriello, a Virginia Democrat, as a special envoy to lead Washington’s efforts to address the conflict.
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