David Lammy ‘terrified’ after meeting war victims face-to-face

Every day families make their way over dry and dusty roads to Chad, fleeing war and famine in Sudan, scenes that have clearly shaken the UK Foreign Secretary.

Under the sweltering sun, David Lammy visited the Adré border post on Friday to see first-hand the impact of Sudan’s civil war as the army and its former ally, the RSF, paramilitary rapid aid forces collapsed.

Those crossing the border have often been separated from their families in the chaos to escape and are desperate to see if their loved ones have made it safely.

“It’s one of the most horrible things I’ve ever heard and seen in my life,” Lammy said.

“Mostly in Chad, on the border with Sudan, what I have seen are women and children fleeing for their lives – telling stories of massacres, mutilations, burnings and widespread sexual violence against them, their children. And among other things, hunger, hunger – such incredible situation.”

The foreign minister saw dozens of women wrapped in bright and colorful shawls and children of various ages passing by in horse-drawn carts.

He looked tired as he sat on his bags, holding on to the few things he could bring with him on the long journey to safety.

“Alhamdulillah” means “praise be to God,” remarked Halima Abdalla when I asked how it felt to cross the border.

The 28-year-old is relieved despite the tragedy of losing one of his children when he fled Darfur, the western region of Sudan, which has seen some of the most devastating violence in the past 21 months. RSF has done it.

“First I went to el-Geneina, but when the fighting broke out there I had to run again,” she says, explaining that she was then separated from her husband and two other children.

Adré aid workers say they are trying to reunite families after crossing the border.

“Some mums have told us they had to choose which children to run with because they couldn’t take them all together,” an assistant told the BBC.

Some abandoned children have been taken across the border by humanitarian workers and placed in foster care while efforts are made to find their families.

Standing on the Chadian side of the border, Lammy spoke to the fleeing families and the aid workers who were picking them up.

After meeting some of the refugees, he told the BBC: “All these people have very, very desperate stories of fleeing violence, murder, rape, torture, mutilation in their families.”

“I sat with a woman who showed me the burn marks. The soldiers burned her up and down her arms, beat her and raped her. This is desperate, and we must bring it to the world’s attention and bring it to an end until the suffering ends.”

But he decried what he described as a “conflict hierarchy” that has apparently put Sudan at the bottom, despite it being the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis today.

In November last year, the UK Foreign Secretary led a resolution calling for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council, which was vetoed by Russia.

“How could you veto the situation going on here?” he asked, exasperated.

He told the BBC that he would now convene a meeting in London of Sudan’s neighbors such as Chad and Egypt and other “international partners to focus on peace”.

Several attempts at peace talks led by the US and Saudi Arabia have failed to resolve the conflict.

Since the mediation was halted, the US has punished generals on both sides of the war. He also determined that the RSF and its allies had committed genocide.

More than 12 million people have fled their homes since fighting began in April 2023.

Caught in the middle of the bitter fighting are more than 50 million civilians, nearly half of whom are in desperate need of humanitarian aid, according to UN agencies.

Malnutrition rates are among the highest in the world here. At the tent clinic in Adré, health workers measure the upper arm circumference of six-month-old Rasma Ibrahim.

Color-coded tape goes to the red end. The effects of his health condition can last his whole life. Here in Adré, one in seven children is malnourished.

Lammy said the UK would continue to push for a ceasefire.

It has already doubled aid to 200 million pounds ($250 million), and is urging other donor countries to follow suit.

Aid agencies are concerned, however, by the announcement of a 90-day freeze on foreign aid by new US President Donald Trump.

A cut in aid from one of the world’s biggest donors will undoubtedly have dire consequences in crises like Sudan’s. The UN is already struggling to meet much-needed aid money targets.

In 2024, an appeal for $2.7 billion (£2.2 billion) was launched to help Sudan, but only 57% of that money was given.

At the food distribution center in Adré, split peas, millet, sacks of sorghum and boxes of oil and other supplies are neatly laid out on tarpaulins as families from the nearby refugee camp line up to claim their share.

The cries of children tied in shawls on the backs of their mothers in line fill the air. One by one, the families are called to collect the rations.

A man helps lift a sack of dry food onto the shoulder of another, who hums as he walks back to his house.

The population of Adré was around 40,000 before the start of Sudan’s civil war and has now grown more than fivefold, according to local volunteers.

The refugees here are among the lucky few. Across the border, in Darfur, famine was declared in August in the Zamzam camp, near the town of el-Fasher, which the RSF has besieged for more than a year.

On Friday there was the devastating news that one of the last functioning hospitals in el-Fasher was hit by a drone, killing at least 30 people. Regional authorities have said the RSF paramilitaries were to blame, but have not responded to the claim.

In December, the UN-backed Famine Commission said the famine had spread to more areas – the Abu Shouk and al-Salam camps in Darfur and parts of South Kordofan state.

Famine spread despite the reopening of the Adré border, which had been closed by the army on suspicion that the army was using it to transport weapons to its rivals.

Leaving the border, three or four trucks with UN World Food Program banners rumbled slowly down the dusty Sudanese road.

They will provide the necessary assistance to the towns, villages and displacement camps across the border. But it is still far from enough.

“We need to step up and wake up to this big, big crisis now,” Lammy said.