Nairobi [Kenya], April 14: Sudan's civil war has triggered the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with around 11.6 million refugees and internally displaced people, according to the United Nations.
About 4.5 million people have fled Sudan to neighbouring countries, but a lack of prospects and uncertainty over an end to the three-year conflict are pushing many to move on, Mamadou Dian Balde, regional director of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Nairobi, said.
"People are arriving in Greece. They are arriving into Italy. They are arriving into Spain," Balde said.
So far, nearly 14,000 Sudanese refugees have reached Europe via the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean, while more than half a million are currently in Libya, he added.
"We need to ramp up, we need to increase the support to refugees," he said, including the countries hosting them.
"If people think that this conflict can continue like this and that it is not going to affect the stability in the region, it's just a big, big, big mistake." Balde spoke ahead of the third International Sudan Conference on Wednesday in Berlin, which seeks to put the war back on the international agenda.
He said that major funding gaps in aid programmes for Sudanese refugees must be addressed.
Source: Qatar Tribune
