President William Ruto Tuesday asked warring parties in Sudan to allow humanitarian agencies to operate freely.
Ruto said the agencies are helping to alleviate the suffering caused by the conflict and their work should proceed unimpeded.
He was speaking when he met the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi who briefed him on the humanitarian and refugee crisis in Sudan.
Grandi told Ruto, who is also the chair of the Quartet Group of Countries on the IGAD roadmap to peace in Sudan, that the situation has escalated and the number of refugees fleeing the war is expected to hit the two million mark.
“The huge number of refugees at the borders of Egypt and Chad has led to a lot of suffering,” he said.
“The saddest part is that the humanitarian staff are not respected and the UNHCR office in Khartoum has been destroyed.”
As chair of the IGAD Quartet Group of Countries, Ruto said they were working to end the crisis.
The quartet brings together Kenya, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti.
Ruto said the Council of Ministers of the group met on Monday under the chairmanship of Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs Alfred Mutua.
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This is even as the Sudanese military government of Abdel Fattah al-Burhan rejected Kenyan President William Ruto’s leadership of the “Troika on Sudan.”
The Troika is a four-nation group of Kenay, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Somalia.
It was tasked by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to bring Al-Burhan and his rival Mohamed
Hamdan Dagalo of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to the negotiation table in the next 10 days.
Before the troika could do any meaningful work, Al-Burhan asked for the troika to be led by South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit.
He claimed that Kenya was taking sides with the RSF in the ongoing conflict in Sudan.
“The Government of the Republic of Sudan announces its rejection of Kenya’s chairmanship of the IGAD Committee concerned with addressing the current crisis in Sudan, given that the Kenyan government and its senior officials have adopted RSF positions, sheltered its elements and provided them with various types of support,” Sudan’s ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement in Arabic.
The rejection portends early problems with the ‘roadmap’ to help achieve a long-term ceasefire and came as the governor of West Darfur was assassinated.
Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary Korir Sing’oei said there had been no official protest from Sudan but did suggest only the Summit can revise the decisions.
“Both the inclusion of the Ethiopia Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to the Troika mandated to seek peace in Sudan Crisis and the appointment of President William Ruto to lead the quartet was arrived at by the Igad Summit and can only be vacated by the Summit,” Singoei said.
Tuesday, Grandi informed Ruto that the UN agency had received a huge boost for its humanitarian efforts after a call for donations raised $1.5 billion on Monday.
He explained that the organization is seeking $3 billion.
Ruto commended the fundraising effort and thanked Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for his tremendous leadership.
Since April 15, their clash has led to more than 1,200 deaths, 800,000 displacements, and serious property destruction.
The sides have signed seven ceasefire deals, all broken within hours of declaration.