United Nations — A new U.N.-backed report says hunger in war-torn Sudan is at unprecedented levels, with more than 25 million people experiencing emergency levels of hunger, 755,000 in catastrophic conditions, and the risk of famine in several regions.

“WFP’s team in Sudan is working day and night in perilous conditions to deliver lifesaving assistance, yet these numbers confirm that time is fast running out to prevent famine,” Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Program, said in a statement Thursday. “For each person we have reached this year, another eight desperately need help.”

McCain said humanitarians urgently need more funding and also for access to be massively expanded so they can scale-up relief operations.

Food security experts gathered the data between April 21 and June 13. Their latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, report says Sudan is facing the worst levels of acute food insecurity ever recorded by the IPC in the country. The IPC was established in 2004.

The experts concluded that more than half of the population — 25.6 million people — are projected to experience crisis levels of hunger or worse during the lean season, which runs from now through September.

In 10 of Sudan’s 18 states, 755,000 people are facing IPC 5 – or catastrophe levels. That includes all five states comprising Greater Darfur, South and North Kordofan, Blue Nile, Al Jazirah, and Khartoum states.

The food experts warned that if the conflict escalates further, there is a risk of famine in 14 areas, including Greater Darfur, Greater Kordofan, Al Jazirah states and some hotspots in the capital, Khartoum.

The IPC says its latest findings “mark a stark and rapid deterioration” of the food security situation compared to their last report in December. The report said 17.7 million people were facing acute hunger, including nearly 5 million people in emergency levels of hunger. Now, the IPC says that emergency level has risen to a projected 8.5 million people.

Children are at particular risk.

“Hunger and malnutrition are spreading at alarming rates, and without concerted international action and funding, there is a very real danger the situation will spiral out of all control,” Catherine Russell, executive director of the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, said in a statement.

“There is no time to lose,” she said. “Any delay in unfettered access to vulnerable populations will be measured in the loss of children’s lives.”

A power struggle between the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces for the last 14 months has created a massive humanitarian crisis. More than 6 million people have been internally displaced, on top of the nearly 4 million who were displaced before the current conflict. Another 2 million have fled to neighboring countries, including Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.

The WFP says it has reached more than 3 million displaced and vulnerable people in Sudan since January, and it is scaling up to reach 5 million more by the end of this year. The food agency also is working to expand access and open new humanitarian routes, from neighboring countries and across conflict front lines.

Additionally, the Food and Agriculture Organization is working to assist the country’s farmers and pastoralists with seeds, animal vaccinations and other critical supplies to restore domestic food production.

While UNICEF is scaling up nutritional screening, malnutrition therapies and vaccinations, it also is distributing clean drinking water to upwards of 5 million people, as part of a multi-pronged effort to prevent famine and disease.
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Residents of a town north of Nairobi are dealing with a surge in hyena attacks. In the past four months, the wild animals have killed three people, including a 10-year-old boy. The rise in human-wildlife conflict has been blamed primarily on humans encroaching on wildlife habitats. But residents of Juja blame improper disposal of livestock, among other factors. Mohammed Yusuf reports.
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Nairobi, Kenya — In an address to the nation on Wednesday, Kenyan President William Ruto said that he’s decided not to sign a bill that included a series of tax increases.

He spoke one day after more than 20 people were killed during protests against the bill that led to clashes with police.

“I concede and therefore I will not sign the 2024 finance bill. It shall subsequently be withdrawn and that shall be our collective position,” he said.

Ruto made the statement from the State House on Wednesday in the presence of lawmakers and thanked those who voted yes for the bill. 

The bill won approval in parliament Tuesday but lawmakers fled the scene as clashes between police and protesters mounted and hundreds of demonstrators stormed the complex. Parts of the parliament were set on fire and burned for hours.

Late Tuesday evening, the Kenyan president condemned protesters’ storming of the parliament as treasonous and a threat to national security.

On Wednesday, human rights defenders and good governance organizations gathered at Kenya Human Rights Commission to condemn the violence against the protesters and accused the president of being accountable for what had happened on Tuesday.

Grace Wangechi is a human rights and social development expert and the executive director of Independent Medico Legal Unit, or IMLU, an organization created in 1993 to protest against torture in Kenya.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Kenyans getting on the streets to voice themselves. This is a constitutional provision as part of the Kenyan constitution 2010,” Wengechi said.

Lorna Dias, human rights defender and executive coordinator of Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, said, “There’s nothing that justifies the use of live bullets on protesters.”

“The destruction of property that happened on the streets was a security failure, and this regime should take the blame,” Dias said.

Deputy President of Kenya Rigathi Gachagua, who also addressed the nation after his boss from the coastal city of Mombasa, said he sympathized with the president but blamed the National Intelligence Service head, Noordin Haji, for Tuesday’s violence.

Gachagua said that had the National Intelligence Service “briefed the president that this bill was unpopular with the Kenyan people, there would not have been deaths and …mayhem.”

There was no immediate response from the intelligence service.

The deputy president asked the protesters to call off other planned protests tomorrow, saying that when that happens, “we can begin an honest conversation on how to work on our country.” 
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New York — A Congolese teenager appealed to the U.N. Security Council Wednesday to protect children in his country, where conflict between the military and armed groups in the country’s east is exacting an appalling toll on children.

“I ask you all to take up the cause of defending children’s rights internationally and in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” the 16-year-old boy, whose identity was protected, told a meeting focusing on children and armed conflict through an interpreter.

Last year, the United Nations verified almost 4,000 grave violations against children in the Central African nation, where armed groups have been vying for years with the military for control over the country’s vast natural resources.

More than 1,800 children were recruited by armed groups last year, according to the annual U.N. report that verifies violations against children.

Sixteen armed groups operating in the country were named and shamed for a range of offenses, from abducting and forcibly recruiting children, to maiming and killing them.

The Congolese armed forces were listed for committing rape and other forms of sexual violence against children, but the U.N. noted they have taken formal steps aimed at preventing such abuses.

More than 650 children were verified to have been killed or maimed last year, the majority by three armed groups — CODECO, the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, and M23. Thirty child casualties were attributed to the army and police.

The teenager who addressed the Security Council spoke of how he was abducted, beaten and forcibly recruited by an armed group on his way to school one day with two friends.

“We cried and trembled, begging them to let us go home to our families, but they wouldn’t listen,” he recounted. “That’s when they started whipping us and keeping us in the bush. We were heavily guarded, and they had orders to kill anyone who tried to flee. I had to leave school to serve this armed group by force.”

His job was to steal food from farmers’ fields.

“During the fighting, many [child recruits] were exposed to being killed by the enemy, and others were killed by their groups themselves, for fear they would divulge their secrets if caught by the military,” he said.

After three years in the bush and losing hope of ever seeing his family again, one day he took his chance and escaped while out searching for food. Found by the army, he was taken into custody and briefly sent to a military prison. He went through demobilization rehabilitation and has now returned to school. But not all children are as fortunate.

“Girls were also abducted,” he said. “Some became wives of the chiefs, while others were taken by other soldiers.”

Spiraling sexual violence

The United Nations report says sexual violence was perpetrated against 279 girls and two boys last year — including rape, gang rape, forced marriage and sexual slavery.

“The use of sexual violence as a modus operandi of armed groups is spiraling,” Ted Chaiban, UNICEF deputy executive director, told the council.

“During my recent visits to the DRC, I met with adolescent girls who had run away with their siblings when their villages were attacked, and who now headed their households,” he said.

Chaiban said it is especially worrying that the conflict is intensifying at the same time the large U.N. peacekeeping mission is beginning to leave the country, at the government’s request.

“There is a very real risk that the humanitarian crisis in the DRC could soon become a catastrophe,” he said.

It is not just children who are experiencing horrific abuse. Women are also subjected to staggering rates of sexual violence.

In Goma, capital of North Kivu province, instances of sexual violence in the first half of 2024 were double the amount recorded over the same time last year, from 7,500 reported cases to 15,000, said Francois Moreillon, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s head of delegation in DRC.

“Anyone with a gun feels that he can do whatever he wants,” he told reporters.

Moreillon recounted how a woman that the ICRC had treated after being raped told caregivers that she and other women were taking condoms with them into the forest when they went to collect firewood — a prime time for women to be attacked.

She said they hoped to persuade their potential rapists to wear them so they could prevent sexually transmitted diseases and lessen the anger of their husbands, who often leave women after finding out they have been raped.

The Congo has one of the largest internal displacement crises in the world, with more than 7 million people affected.
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Nairobi, Kenya — Four hundred Kenyan security officers arrived in Haiti on Tuesday, part of a contingent of international police forces sent to quell gang violence and restore democratic rule in the Caribbean nation. At the same time, protests over proposed tax increases in Kenya turned violent as demonstrators stormed the parliament building, and clashes with police turned deadly.

Some of the protesters question the point of sending police to Haiti when there is such unrest in Kenya.  

“They went yesterday to Haiti but it’s so ironic because back at home here, we don’t have peace, the police themselves are fighting us … but we have taken our police to Haiti to fight people from other nationalities, when at home we are not at peace,” one protester named Denish said. “I think the government tries to tell us we don’t have a voice, we don’t have a say.” 

Kelvin Moses was not a protester Tuesday, but he echoed those views. 

“For me it’s a double-edged sword, because you can’t take some troops out of the country when the same country is facing instability, so it’s like you are trying to help a neighbor whereas your house is on fire,” he said. “So, for me it’s self-centered … we don’t know what procedures have been taken, there was a court order which halted the same process from going on, but the government has bulldozed its way to send troops to Haiti.” 

Speaking at a send-off ceremony earlier this week, Kenyan President Willam Ruto told police officers departing for Haiti their mission will help lasting peace return to the conflict-ravaged country. 

“This mission is one of the most urgent, important and historic in the history of global solidarity. It’s a mission to affirm the universal values of the community of nations and a mission to take a stand for humanity,” Ruto said at the ceremony. 

Last year, a United Nations Security Council resolution approved the Kenyan-led mission to help tackle violence and restore peace in the mostly gang-controlled nation. But earlier this year the High Court of Kenya ruled against the deployment, saying it was unconstitutional. Issues cited by the court include the lack of a “reciprocal agreement” between the countries.  

The Kenyan government eventually secured that agreement, but the same people who sued the government recently filed another lawsuit seeking to block the deployment. The High Court has yet to make a ruling.  

Javas Bigambo, a Kenyan lawyer and governance consultant, expressed concern over the possible fallout following a decision. 

“In the event this issue is settled as unconstitutional again, what then will befall the Kenyan government, especially on the part of the executive; the issue of security officers being deep in mission in Haiti and perhaps being demanded they’d be recalled back to base, back to the country, it’s something that will leave a very bad taste in the mouth of the leadership of the country,” Bigambo said. 

Bigambo told VOA that while this mission puts Kenya on the global map as a player in international peacekeeping, all Kenyan eyes will be on Haiti to see whether the police are making a difference. 

“The success of this mission or its failure is what now will determine whether there was wisdom and appropriateness in the deployment of Kenyan police forces to Haiti,” Bigambo said. “Secondly, the way the peace mission will be handled and how the number of casualties that will emerge or fail to emerge from the deployment will also count among the major success factors.”  

In a televised address to the nation late Tuesday evening, Ruto condemned protesters’ storming of the parliament as treasonous and a threat to national security. 

In a subsequent address to the nation Wednesday, the Kenyan president said that after reflecting on the content of the finance bill, and listening to the people who are against it, he decided not to sign it. His deputy Rigathi Gachagua appealed to the demonstrators to call off planned protests Thursday.
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