David Lammy ‘horrified’ after meeting the victims of war face to face

Every day families run along a dry and dusty road towards Chad, fleeing from war and famine in Sudan, scenes that have clearly shaken the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom.

Under the suffocating Sun, David Lammy visited the Post of the Adré border on Friday to witness first hand the impact of the Civil War of Sudan that exploded when the army and its former ally, the paramilitary rapid support forces (RSF), They fell.

Those who reach the border have often been separated from their families in chaos to escape and are desperate to see if their relatives have arrived safely.

“They are some of the most horrible things that I have 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 generalized killing, mutilation, ardor, sexual violence against them, their children. And between all , everything, famine, hunger: an incredible difficult situation. “

The Foreign Minister saw the dozens of women wrapped in light multicolored shares and holding children of different ages that crossed in horses thrown away.

They were tired sitting in bags that supported the few belongings they could bring with them on the long journey to security.

“Alhamdulillah” which means “praise is God,” says Halima Abdalla when I asked him how he felt he had reached the border.

The 28 -year -old feels relieved despite the tragedy she has suffered to lose one of her children while she fled Darfur, the western region of Sudan, who has suffered part of the most devastating violence in the last 21 months, much of it. It has been perpetrated by the RSF.

“First I went to El-Geneina, but I had to run again when the fights exploded,” he says, explaining how she separated from her husband and two other children.

Humanitarian workers in Adré say they have been trying to gather families once they crossed the border.

“Some mothers have told us that they had to choose which children to run, since they could not take them only once,” a humanitarian worker told the BBC.

Some abandoned children have been brought by humanitarian workers through the border and feel in parenting care while efforts to find their families.

Standing on the Chadiano side of the border, Lammy spoke with the families who fled and the humanitarian workers who received them.

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

“I sat down with a woman who showed me burning ratings. The soldiers had burned her up and down, she had been beaten and had been raped. This is desperate and we must attract the attention of the world and bring her suffering to an end.”

But he denounced what he described as a “hierarchy of conflict” that has apparently placed Sudan at the bottom, although it is currently the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

In November last year, the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary headed a resolution asking for a stop fire in the UN Security Council, which Russia Vetó.

“How could you veto the difficult situation that is happening here?” He asked, sounding exasperated.

He told the BBC that he now planned to convene, in London, a meeting of residents of Sudan such as Chad and Egypt and other “international partners to negotiate peace.”

Several attempts at peace conversations led by the United States and Saudi Arabia have not achieved a solution to the conflict.

Since mediation stagnated, the United States later sanctioned the generals who led both sides of the war. He also determined that the RSF and his allies had committed genocide.

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

Amid the bitter struggle there are more than 50 million civilians, almost half of whom desperately need humanitarian aid, according to UN agencies.

Malnutrition rates are among the highest in the world here. In the Campaign Clinic in ADRÉ, health workers measure the circumference of the top of the six -month Rasma Ibrahim arm.

The colored ribbon goes to the red end. The impact of your health status could last your life. One in seven children here in adré is malnourished.

The United Kingdom would continue to press the fire for a high, Lammy said.

It has already doubled the aid to £ 200 million ($ 250 million), and is asking that other donor countries take a step forward.

However, help agencies are concerned about the announcement of the newly opened US president Donald Trump of a 90 -day freezing in foreign aid.

An interruption in the support of one of the largest donors in the world will undoubtedly have devastating consequences in crisis as Sudan. The UN is already struggling to meet its goals for poorly necessary help.

In 2024, an appeal for $ 2.7 billion (£ 2.2 billion) was issued to support Sudan, but only 57% of this money was provided.

In the Food Distribution Center in ADRÉ, layers of divided yellow peas, sorghum and kitchen oil boxes and other supplies carefully supplies on canvases have been organized as families of the Camp of Camp of nearby refugees for their quotas.

The screams of babies tied by shales behind their backs in tail fill the air. One by one, families are called to collect their rations.

A man helps to lift a sack of dry food on another’s shoulder, which then hums while returning home.

The adré population was approximately 40,000 before the Civil War of Sudan began and now it has become more than five times, according to local volunteers.

The refugees here are among the lucky few. Just on the other side of the border, in Darfur, the famine was declared in August at the Zamzam camp, near the city of El-Fafasher, which the RSF has besieged for more than a year.

In December, the UN Hungic Review Committee said it had spread to more areas, in Darfur to the ABU Shou and Al-Salam camps and parts of the state of South Kordofan.

The famine extended despite the reopening of the adré border that had been closed by the army on suspicion that it was being used to transport weapons to its rivals.

When we left the border, three or four trucks with banners of the UN Food Program slowly rumbled for the dusty Road Crossing to Sudan.

They will deliver very necessary help to towns, cities and displacement camps beyond the border. But it is still far from enough.

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