International staff will not be allowed to participate in the first inter-agency humanitarian assessment of Sudan’s war-torn Blue Nile state since 2011.
“International staff members of UN agencies and international NGOs were not permitted to take part in these needs assessments,” read a statement by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). OCHA said the decision is being followed up locally and in Khartoum.
However, Sudanese authorities have asked international NGOs to provide funding for the same assessment, which is scheduled for next month.
“Local authorities in the localities where assessments are taking place lack the funding to support the assessment and therefore request international NGOs to fund the exercise,” OCHA said.
OCHA said the request for money was made in a monthly meeting of the Humanitarian Aid Commission in Blue Nile with the UN, national, and international NGOs.
Blue Nile has been the site of armed conflict between the SPLM-North and the Sudanese Armed Forces for three years.
Some 240,000 people need humanitarian aid in Blue Nile, according to the Humanitarian Needs Overview of the Sudan Strategic Response Plan, including 110,000 internally displaced persons in government-held areas.
OCHA noted that another 90,000 IDPs are in SPLM-N areas, according to the SPLM-N’s humanitarian wing, though UN agencies do not have access to these parts.
A survey conducted by the Federal Ministry of Health and the UN Children’s Fund found an estimated 36,000 children under five years will suffer acute malnutrition this year.