The humanitarian wing and the top political leadership of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) held a three-day extraordinary meeting that ended on Monday. The meeting was to assess the humanitarian situation in the war-torn states of South Kordofan and the Blue Nile, and to reiterate the SPLM-N’s commitment for the polio vaccination campaign to take place as scheduled.  

The meeting resolved on the readiness of the SPLM-N for talks with the Sudanese government to agree on the arrangements needed for the polio campaign.

In a press statement issued today by Yasir Arman, Secretary General of the SPLM-N, the SPLM-N notes that “the meeting came at a time when 28 months have passed since the Khartoum government denied humanitarian access to the civilian population in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile, which resulted in more than one million displaced people and refugees in South Sudan and Ethiopia. It came at the time when the Sudan government intensified its aerial bombardments resulting in the killing and wounding of hundreds and terrorising hundreds of thousands.”

According to the statement, “the Sudan government, meanwhile, is carrying out its charming public relations and diplomatic campaigns while on the other hand continuing to deny access for humanitarian aid, which constitutes a war crime in international humanitarian law, and bombarding civilian populations, and refusing to sit with the SPLM-N as the two parties to the conflict who are responsible for resolving the humanitarian issues and were asked to do so by the African Union and by UNSC Resolution 2046 and the last UN Security Council statement on October 10, 2013.”  

File photo