'Don't forget Sudan,’ says UN Refugee chief as war displaced face hunger

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi has called on the world to not forget the conflict in Sudan, which has been engulfed by violence since April last year.

Grandi pushed for peace as he visited a transit centre in Renk, set up by UNHCR, in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State, near the Joda border with Sudan.

The centre was originally built to accommodate 4,000 people, but now has more than 13,000 people living in and around it.

The UNHCR chief met the family of Babiker Suliman, who arrived in Renk in December 2023, to escape fighting in El-Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur region.

The Sudanese family of 13 live in a communal shelter with two other families.

Earlier in June, the U.N. reported the number of internally displaced people in Sudan has reached more than 10 million.

Sudan’s latest conflict began last year when soaring tensions between the leaders of the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country.

The war has wrecked Sudan, killing more than 14,000 people and wounding thousands of others, while pushing its population to the brink of famine.