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Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
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SUDAN: UN calls for full humanitarian access

NEW YORK, 25 April (IRIN) - Senior United Nations humanitarian officials
today called on both parties to the conflict in Sudan to lift all flight
bans and to grant full access to people in desperate need of humanitarian
assistance.

“We are appealing to both sides to give us access so we can get food and
non-food items to people who need it,” Ambassador Tom Vraalsen, the Special
Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs for Sudan, told
reporters in New York today.

The Sudanese government has denied access to more than 40 locations since
late March, double the usual number of denials, effectively cutting off
humanitarian supply lines into parts of Eastern Equatoria, Bahr El Gazal,
and Western Upper Nile, according to a statement issued by the UN’s
Executive Committee on Humanitarian Affairs (ECHA).

Over a million people dependant on relief assistance for survival are
affected, the statement said.

The Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM), for their part, has
restricted flights to the city of Wau in South-East Sudan, according to
ECHA.

“We cannot allow a repeat of the 1998 famine, when a combination of dry
season fighting and denials of humanitarian access brought about massive
starvation,” United Nations Emergency Relief Co-coordinator Kenzo Oshima
said. “We need access, and we need it now.”

The lack of humanitarian access coincides with the end of the dry season, a
time when aid agencies seek to increase their shipments of relief supplies
in preparation for the rainy season, which renders many roads impassable.

[ENDS]

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