The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has announced that more than 11,000 people have gone missing in Sudan since the outbreak of war three years ago, with thousands of cases still lacking information about the victims’ fate.
In a statement, the ICRC said that the number of missing persons cases has increased by more than 40 per cent over the past year, noting that the documented figures likely represent only a small fraction of the true scale of the crisis.
In a related development, James Reynolds, the ICRC’s deputy regional director, said that shifting front lines have contributed to the displacement of more than 11 million people across the country.
READ:IOM: 1,725 newly displaced in Sudan’s Blue Nile State
Meanwhile, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative in Sudan, Luca Renda, said that poverty levels have doubled over the past three years, with 70 per cent of the population now living below the poverty line.
Renda added that one in four Sudanese lives in extreme poverty, surviving on less than two dollars per day, while poverty rates have reached 75 per cent in conflict-affected regions such as Darfur and Kordofan.
Renda warned that the situation is likely to deteriorate further if the war continues.
Recent fighting has intensified in parts of Kordofan State in the south-west and Blue Nile State in the south-east, with increased reliance on drone strikes, further disrupting daily life and worsening humanitarian conditions.
READ: In 3 years of war, WHO verifies 217 attacks on health care in Sudan
