UNITED NATIONS: Rhino – UNFPA Regional Director for Arab States Leila Bakr said the situation in Sudan is one of the worst she has seen in her 30-year career at the United Nations.

Bakr briefed journalists at UN headquarters in New York via video link from Amman on what she witnessed during her visit to Sudan a few days ago and the “tragic situation” there, where she said women and girls were deprived of all their basic necessities.

She added: “Imagine thousands of women crammed into a shelter where they have no clean water, no hygiene, not enough food for their next meal, and no medical care for these displaced women.”

The UN official said she visited a women’s shelter in the Deem Arab area of Port Sudan that was supposed to accommodate a few hundred people, but is now housing more than 2,000 displaced women, adding that “this is a very crowded environment.”

Despite the overcrowding, women and girls there felt happy just to be among other women where they could gather, access services, and speak freely for the first time after having been displaced several times, she said.

The UNFPA Regional Director for the Arab States noted the threat of famine that threatens more than 26 million people in Sudan, “which is roughly equivalent to the population of Australia.” “For 600,000 pregnant women, 18,000 are likely to die as a result of this famine,” Bakr said. “They don’t know where their next meal will come from.

Given the complexity of the conflict, the physical and human loss and devastation caused by displacement and loss of loved ones, as well as widespread sexual violence, “you can understand that we, as UNFPA, are deeply concerned about the consequences, both immediate and long-term, for women and girls in Sudan,” she said.

Bakr emphasized the need for “unimpeded humanitarian access, which is a real issue for us.” The UN official emphasized that from her meetings with women in Sudan and what she has heard directly from them, “what they want more than anything else – more than water, more than food – is immediate protection from the raging war.”

She added: “They want peace and stability. They don’t want to relive this experience over and over again.”