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By Natalie Venegas
Weekend Reporter
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Sudan has reached a "catastrophic breaking point" as ongoing conflict and devastating floods ravage the nation, according to the United Nations' migration agency on Monday.
Over the past 16-months, Sudan's civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has had devastating humanitarian impacts. According to the U.N., nearly 10.7 million people have been internally displaced and upwards of 14,000 people have been killed.
According to the Associated Press (AP), the western region of Darfur has seen the brunt of the violence with atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings, which the U.N. and international rights groups have condemned as war crimes.
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In addition, recent floods have exacerbated the humanitarian disaster. Dozens have died, and critical infrastructure has been destroyed across 11 of Sudan's 18 provinces, the AP reported.
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On Monday, the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Sudan's war has created the world's largest displacement crisis with more than 10.7 million people having been forced to flee their homes since fighting began, including over 2 million who fled to neighboring countries.
"We are at a breaking point, a catastrophic, cataclysmic breaking point," Othman Belbeisi, IOM's regional director told the AP, warning that if the war and restrictions on humanitarian access continue these conditions will worsen.
"Without an immediate, massive and coordinated global response, we risk witnessing tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the coming months," Belbeisi said.
Newsweek reached out to the International Organization for Migration via email on Monday for further comment.
Aid workers have been unable to provide humanitarian relief to internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Darfur since April, according to the AP. A U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spokesperson previously told Newsweek that even in those April deliveries, "less than 10 percent of the population was reached."
Other global aid programs and agencies have also issued calls to allow aid to enter, such as the World Food Programme (WFP), who has repeatedly requested "all warring parties to allow humanitarian food assistance by freeing up key access points within the country and on its borders."
The latest U.N. warning on conditions inside Sudan comes just days before planned peace talks are scheduled to take place on Wednesday in Switzerland, the success of which remains uncertain due to the SAF's reluctance to commit.
However, the RSF has agreed to participate and was confirmed to reporters on Monday by Tom Perriello, the U.S. special envoy for Sudan.
According to the AP, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, who are brokering the talks, face a challenge in bringing the military to the table.
Over the weekend, a Sudanese government delegation met with U.S. officials in Jeddah in an effort to have the SAF attend the peace talks, but were unsuccessful.
"We've had extensive engagement with the Sudanese Armed Forces, but they have not yet given us an affirmation," Perriello said, noting that the military's participation is necessary for progress to be made. "We have not given up hope that SAF will attend the talks."
Meanwhile, the main global body analyzing food crises, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification's Famine Review Committee (FRC), concluded on August 1 that there is famine in Zamzam camp in the North Darfur, Sudan. This is the third time the committee has ever used the categorization.
The committee determines famine in any given area as when at least 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages, at least 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition, and the daily death rate exceeds 2 people per 10,000.
The scale of hunger across the country is enormous, with the U.N. estimating that "about 25.6 million people—over half of the population of Sudan—face acute hunger, including more than 755,000 people on the brink of famine."
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