David Lammy ‘horrified’ after meeting war victims face-to-face happymamay

BBC David Lammy in Abyad amid a crowd of newly arrived Sudanese people and aid workers in Chad. BBC

Families stream every day down a dry, dusty road into Chad, fleeing war and famine in Sudan – scenes that clearly shook the UK Foreign Secretary.

Under the Sweltering Sun, David Lammy visited the Adre border post on Friday to witness the impact of Sudan’s civil war that broke out when the army and its former ally, the military’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), fell.

Those who make it at the border are often separated from their families in the chaos to escape and are desperate to know if their relatives have made it safely.

“It’s some of the scariest things I’ve ever heard and seen in my life,” Lammy said.

“Overwhelmingly, what I have seen here in Chad, on the border with Sudan, are women and children fleeing for their lives – telling stories of widespread slaughter, mutilation, burning, sexual violence against them, and their children. Famine, hunger – such an ordeal cannot “Believe.”

The Foreign Minister saw dozens of women wrapped in light, multi-colored shawls, holding children of different ages who were crossing on horse-drawn carriages.

They looked exhausted, sitting on bags carrying the few possessions they could bring with them on the long journey to safety.

“Hamdalila” means “praise be to God,” says Halima Abdullah when I asked her how she felt it made her above the limits.

The 28-year-old is at peace despite the tragedy she suffered in losing one of her children while fleeing Darfur, the western region of Sudan, which was perpetrated by the RSF.

“I first went to Elginina, but had to run again when fighting broke out there,” she says.

A seated aid worker in Chad looks over his shoulder as he hands papers to a woman in a group of people newly arrived from Sudan

Newly registered aid workers are trying to reunite those who have been separated from relatives and children as they fled

Aid workers in Adre say they try to reunite families once they cross the border.

One aid worker told the BBC: “Some mothers told us they had to choose which babies they couldn’t run with because they couldn’t carry them all in one.”

Some abandoned children have been brought by humanitarian workers across the border and are being placed in foster care while efforts are made to find their families.

Standing on the Chadian side of the border, Lammy spoke with families who were fleeing and the aid workers they were receiving.

After interviewing some of the refugees, he told the BBC: “All these people have stories – very desperate stories of violence on the run, of murder in their families, of rape, of torture, of mutilation.”

“I sat with one woman who showed me signs of being burned. She has been burned by soldiers up and down her arms, she has been beaten and she has been raped. This is desperate, and we must bring the world’s attention to her and bring her suffering to an end.”

But he criticized what he described as a “hierarchy of conflict” that had seemingly placed Sudan at the bottom, even though it is currently the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

In November last year, the UK Foreign Secretary led a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the UN Security Council, which achieved a veto against Russia.

“How can you veto the ordeal going on here?” He asked, sounding angry.

He told the BBC that he now intends to convene, in London, a meeting of Sudan’s neighbors such as Chad, Egypt and other “international partners of the peace mediator.”

Several attempts at peace talks led by the United States and Saudi Arabia have failed to achieve a solution to the conflict.

Since mediation ceased, the United States later imposed which generals would lead both sides of the war. He also determined that the RSF and its allies had committed genocide.

More than 12 million people have fled their homes since fighting broke out in April 2023.

Women in colorful hijabs sit on mats, some children clutch on their laps in a makeshift reception area in Manshur Adri, Chad.

These women and children filmed on Friday crossed into Chad fleeing atrocities committed in Darfur

Caught in the middle of the bitter fighting have been more than 50 million civilians, nearly half of whom are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, according to UN agencies.

Malnutrition rates are among the highest in the world here. At the adorable clinic in Adre, health workers measure the upper arm circumference of six-month-old Rasma Ibrahim.

The color-coded strip goes all the way to the red end. The impact of her health condition can last her whole life. One in seven children here in Adre suffers from malnutrition.

Lammy said the UK would continue to press for a ceasefire.

It has already doubled aid to 200 million pounds ($250 million), and is calling for other donor countries to step up.

However, aid agencies are concerned about newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 90-day freeze on foreign aid.

Disruption in support for one of the world’s largest donors will undoubtedly have devastating consequences for crises like Sudan. The United Nations is already struggling to meet its targets for desperately needed aid funds.

In 2024, a $2.7bn (£2.2bn) appeal was made to support Sudan, but only 57% of these funds have been made available.

At a food distribution center in Adre, bags of yellow split peas, millet, sorghum, boxes of cooking oil and other supplies were arranged on top of a common canvas as families from a nearby refugee camp waited for their rations.

The cries of infants tied by shawls to their mothers’ backs in a queue fill the air. One by one, families are called to collect their rations.

The man helps lift a bag of dry food onto the other’s shoulder, then hums as he makes his way to his temporary home.

David Lammy in a white shirt bends over the bed as a mother sits with a baby and a child at an MSF clinic in Chad. An MSF plane stands nearby

David Lammy, who also visited an MSF clinic in Adre, urged donors to increase aid in Sudan

Adre had a population of about 40,000 before Sudan’s civil war began and now it has grown more than five-fold, according to local volunteers.

Refugees here are among the lucky few. Just across the border, in Darfur, a famine was declared in August in the Zamzam camp, near the city of El Fasher, which the RSF had besieged for more than a year.

In December, the Unsupported Famine Review Commission said it had spread to more areas – in Darfur to the Abu Shouk and Al Samam camps and to parts of South Kordofan state.

Famine spread despite the reopening of Adré’s borders, which had been closed by the army on suspicion that it was being used to transport weapons to its rivals.

As we left the border, banners from the United Nations Global Program for the United Nations slowly descended on the dusty road into Sudan.

They will deliver much-needed aid to villages, towns and displacement camps outside the borders. But it is still far from enough.

“We have to step up and wake up now to this huge, huge crisis,” Lamy said.

More about the war in Sudan:

Getty Images/BBC A woman looks at her mobile phone and BBC Africa news graphicGetty Images/BBC

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