The United States said it will give an extra $203 million to help millions of civilians affected by the Sudan war.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on Thursday, calling on other nations to step up their aid.
“This is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” she told reporters.
The U.N. says nearly 25 million people – half of Sudan’s population need aid, famine is looming and 10 million people have fled their homes, adding that more than 2.2 million of those people have left for other countries.
“The scale of this crisis is overwhelming. But now it’s not a moment to throw up our hands. We must continue to fight for the people of Sudan.
“People are eating dirt to survive relying on tree leaves for nutrition,” Thomas-Greenfied said.
The U.N. World Food Programme has called the sharply worsening hunger crisis the worst in the world, adding that there’s a chance of famine in 14 areas across Sudan.
The additional U.S. money takes the total American funding for Sudanese civilians in Sudan, Chad, Egypt and South Sudan to $1.6 billion since the conflict began, a U.S. official said.
The U.S. is the largest single donor to the aid response.
“We hope this new round of aid serves as a call to action for others,” said Thomas-Greenfield, who visited Adre on Chad’s border with Sudan in September to meet refugees from the war.
The war, triggered by a plan to integrate the army and paramilitary forces in a transition to free elections, has produced waves of ethnically driven violence blamed largely on the RSF. The RSF denies harming civilians and attributes the activity to rogue actors.
