At a press convention right this moment launching the discharge of the Medical doctors With out Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) report, “A war on people: The human cost of conflict and violence in Sudan,” Vickie Hawkins, the final director of MSF Netherlands, described the patterns of violence witnessed by our groups and reiterated our name for elevated worldwide help and safety of civilians.
Beneath is her full assertion:
“Expensive friends and colleagues, thanks for becoming a member of us right this moment as we announce the discharge of MSF’s report ‘A warfare on individuals: The human value of battle and violence in Sudan.’ At this time we’re sharing MSF’s findings and our critical considerations on the whole collapse within the safety of civilians in Sudan by each fighters.
The warring parties in Sudan have been inflicting horrendous ranges of violence on individuals since April 2023. The direct and lethal affect of the warfare on the individuals of Sudan has left the nation’s well being companies largely in ruins. At this time, we reiterate our name on all fighters to instantly cease all assaults on civilians. We additionally urge the 2 sides to permit protected passage and routes for individuals looking for security, and to guard civilian infrastructure from additional destruction and looting.
The implications of over a yr of unrelenting battle on the lives, well being, and wellbeing of individuals in Sudan are disastrous. Individuals have skilled horrible violence. They’ve been dying because of widespread preventing and have survived repeated assaults, abuse, and exploitation by each the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Fast Assist Forces (RSF). Drawing on our medical and operational information that we’ve collected spanning a interval of 13 months, from April 15, 2023, up till Could 15, 2024, the report we launch right this moment highlights the patterns of violence noticed by our groups. It outlines the options of abuse which characterize this battle, and the following well being penalties for the individuals in Sudan.
Over the previous two months, MSF-supported well being services have been repeatedly attacked and focused. We had been pressured to droop operations in Wad Madani, in southeastern Sudan, and lately within the Turkish Hospital in Khartoum, the capital. Since Could, MSF-supported hospitals or premises have been hit by shelling or airstrikes no less than 5 instances in Omdurman, Khartoum, and El Fasher, resulting in the deaths of well being staff and sufferers, together with kids. Hospitals by which we work in El Fasher and in Khartoum had been additionally stormed and attacked.
In battle areas in Khartoum and throughout Darfur area, we assist among the few remaining hospitals and emergency wards functioning in Sudan. Our groups deal with 1000’s of war-wounded sufferers in areas surrounded by violence, large-scale bombing, and shelling. In these areas, houses, well being services and important infrastructure have been hit, destroyed, and made inoperable.
Between August 15, 2023, and April 30, 2024, the Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman—one of many eight services MSF is or has supported in Khartoum state—admitted a complete of 6,776 war-wounded sufferers. That is a median of 26 war-wounded sufferers admitted per day. Simply over half of those sufferers had gunshot wounds, 42 % had shrapnel wounds, and 5 % had been stabbed. At the very least 399 individuals died from their accidents.
One yr of warfare in Sudan
One MSF affected person from Nyala, Darfur, advised us in March 2024, “The lads had been armed with weapons and wearing RSF camouflage/army uniform. Once I turned to stroll again into my home, one of many armed males stabbed me within the again and one other soldier hit me on the again of the top very onerous……and I fell to the bottom. The troopers broke into my home and took some garments and private belongings.”
Girls and kids haven’t been spared. In March this yr, ladies and kids comprised nearly 30 % of the 624 war-wounded [patients] handled at Al Nao Hospital in that month. Within the 11 months between Could 2023 and April 2024, MSF groups in Bashair Educating Hospital in Khartoum handled 4,393 sufferers who had trauma-related accidents. This corresponds to only over 4 in 10 emergency division consultations our groups supplied throughout this era.
Regardless of the well being system struggling to adequately meet individuals’s wants, humanitarian and medical organizations have regularly been blocked from offering assist. Though authorities have begun issuing visas for humanitarian employees extra readily, makes an attempt to supply important medical care are nonetheless usually impeded by bureaucratic blockages. These embrace refusals to subject journey permits to permit the passage of individuals and important provides. The violence of the fighters is compounded by obstructions: by blocking or interfering companies when individuals want them most, the withholding of stamps and signatures may be simply as lethal as firing bullets and bombs.
Throughout Sudan, individuals’s entry to lifesaving care has been drastically affected. Not solely are humanitarian and medical staff blocked from offering lifesaving companies, however hospitals have been routinely looted and attacked all through the warfare. In April, the UN Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that 70 to 80 % of hospitals in conflict-affected areas had been now not purposeful.
A number of the assaults that we’ve documented embrace the MSF-supported Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman having been shelled on [three] separate events, most lately a few month in the past, on June 19.
In July 2023, a well being care employee of the MSF-supported Al-Saudi Maternity Hospital was fatally shot contained in the maternity ward, main the power to shut and relocate to a different MSF-supported facility.
In Could this yr, an airstrike killed two kids after the intensive care unit roof collapsed on the MSF-supported Baker Nahar Pediatric Hospital in El Fasher. The hospital was pressured to shut.
The record of assaults on well being services goes on and on. Now we have documented no less than 60 incidents of violence and assaults by the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Fast Assist Forces on MSF employees, properties, and infrastructure.
Assaults on our colleagues, fellow humanitarian staff, and well being services are fully unacceptable. However we all know the violence that we’ve suffered pales compared to the violence endured by the individuals as a complete.
The battle has pressured thousands and thousands to flee residence. Within the camps and gathering websites the place refugees from the area and displaced individuals search security, sufferers recount horrific tales of inhumane therapy and violence perpetrated by armed teams on them. Individuals’s accounts describe pressured eviction, looting and arson, degrading interrogation, arbitrary arrest, abduction, and torture on a scientific stage.
Sexual and gender-based violence is pervasive however critically underreported because of stigma, silence for worry of retaliation, and the void of safety companies and confidential areas to reveal violence. Information from MSF services supporting Sudanese refugees in Chad trace on the widespread use of sexual violence as a characteristic of the battle, notably focusing on ladies and women. Between July and December 2023, 135 survivors in Adre, on the Chadian facet of the border with Sudan, disclosed to our groups situations of rape, abduction, and exploitation in Sudan in the course of the battle. In 90 % of circumstances, perpetrators had been armed males.
The report additionally particulars focused ethnic violence towards individuals in Darfur. A retrospective mortality survey carried out by MSF between August and September 2023, in three Sudanese refugee camps in Chad, confirmed a big improve in mortality in Sudan for the reason that begin of the battle. Responses from refugees housed in Ourang camp, who come primarily from El Geneina in Sudan, indicated that their households have misplaced the best variety of members of the family. Reviews from individuals surveyed in Ourang recommend as a lot as a 20-fold improve in mortality charges in Sudan from April 2023, with a peak in June of that yr, in comparison with pre-war charges.
This information corresponds with testimonies individuals shared with MSF in Nyala, South Darfur, describing occasions in mid-2023. Individuals advised us Fast Assist Forces and aligned militia went home to accommodate, looting, beating, and killing individuals, focusing on Masalit and different individuals of non-Arab ethnicities.
Ethnic violence and sexual and gender-based violence must not ever occur. MSF calls on fighters to cease all focused types of violence and abuse towards the individuals of Sudan.
The present battle is having a disastrous impact on the lives, well being and wellbeing of individuals in Sudan. The bodily and psychological wounds of violence have been exacerbated by the collapse of the well being system and the scant worldwide humanitarian response. MSF groups proceed to deal with individuals dying from preventable causes as a result of sufferers had been unable to achieve services earlier or afford medication, if out there. Our psychological well being groups are seeing the super toll of battle and violence on individuals’s psychological well being and psychological wellbeing. Trauma-related signs are widespread, and a few sufferers are moved to self-harm.
MSF continues to reply to pressing medical wants and the results of ongoing violence, additional exacerbated by the shortage of humanitarian entry and the fighters’ blatant disregard for human life and worldwide humanitarian regulation. At this time, we reemphasize our calls on all fighters to make sure the safety of civilians and humanitarian staff, and to permit the wounded and sick access to health care. We name on the fighters in Sudan to abide by their obligations relating to the safety of civilians, and we additionally name on worldwide help organizations and donor governments to make sure that help is delivered to all these in want and to urgently improve the humanitarian response the place wanted.
This warfare on individuals highlighted in our report supplies a glimpse on the humanitarian state of affairs throughout eight states in Sudan the place we work, and the place our groups witness these crises. Individuals in Sudan proceed to be the victims of each the direct and oblique penalties of this lethal and damaging battle. After 14 months of warfare, the completely different fighters are hampering the response, leaving individuals unable to entry lifesaving help and safety, severely compromising entry to high quality, reasonably priced well being care, and blocking vitally wanted help.
This should finish now.”
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Médecins sans frontières (MSF).