“Time is running out” as famine, disease and fighting close in on the population, with no end in sight, said U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami.

“The international community cannot stand by as this crisis spirals out of control, as the noose of this conflict tightens its stranglehold on the civilian population,” she said, speaking to journalists at U.N. Headquarters in New York.

For more than a year, the Sudanese army and the rival Rapid Support Forces have been engaged in fierce battles that have brought Sudan – already one of the world’s poorest countries – to an utter state of catastrophe.

And as always with war, the most vulnerable and poorest suffer the most.

According to the U.N. approximately 18 million Sudanese are experiencing severe hunger – with over five million people on the brink of famine!

U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami said, “We have just six weeks before the lean season sets in, when food becomes less available and more expensive.”

And Nkweta-Salami added that with two more life-threatening deadlines coming quickly – the rainy season, making it more difficult to reach desperate people, and end of planting season – “The people of Sudan are in the path of a perfect storm that is growing more lethal by the day” (see: https://bit.ly/3L6jZKn).

To escape the war, and its subsequent famine, over 9 million Sudanese have been forcibly displaced – the largest number of displaced people in the world – many crossing over into neighboring countries like South Sudan – the poorest country on earth!

Several years ago, an 80-year-old nun spoke to me very favorably about her personal knowledge of the Sudan Relief Fund. And since then, I have been keeping informed and contributing to their wonderful life-saving efforts. They are funding remarkable work, done by remarkable people like Dr. Tom Catena (see: https://sdnrlf.com/our_team/dr-tom-catena/).

On a recent visit to Sudan and South Sudan, Sudan Relief Fund’s senior vice president Matt Smith sadly reported, “To put the crisis in perspective, families are risking their lives to come to a desperately poor country with no resources to help them, because it’s preferable to being in the crossfire of Sudan’s violent war. In the truest sense, they have no other choice” (see: https://sdnrlf.com/campaigns/humanitarian-catastrophe-as-masses-flee-to-worlds-poorest-nation/ and please kindly make a donation).

The independent research organization International Crisis Group is urging the United Nations and the United States to urgently mediate a truce saying, “All should support a U.N.-led initiative to negotiate evacuation corridors for the suffering population in El Fasher and the surrounding camps for the displaced” – where a major military battle is unfolding – “and insist on immediate cross-border access for U.N. aid agencies into all areas of Sudan to stave off famine.”

Maryknoll – the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America – has prepared an action alert for us. Please kindly complete and send it (see: https://bit.ly/3Ld0pfs).

The world’s Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council declared: “Since there are so many people prostrate with hunger in the world, this sacred council urges all, both individuals and governments, to remember the aphorism of the Fathers, ‘Feed the man dying of hunger, because if you have not fed him, you have killed him.’ "

Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag6@comcast.net.