UN High Commissioner for Refugees Visits Sudan 

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, accompanied by a team from the UNHCR, arrived in Port Sudan yesterday (Thursday). He met separately with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohi El-Din Salem, and the Commissioner General for Humanitarian Aid, Salwa Adam Benya, to discuss his program for his visit, which is scheduled to last approximately one week.

The High Commissioner will travel today to the Northern State and will meet tomorrow, Saturday, with various volunteer organizations working in the Al-Afad camp in the Ad-Dabba locality, which houses internally displaced persons (IDPs) from El-Fasher. He will listen to their assessments of the humanitarian situation and the needs of the displaced before touring the camp with his team to record his firsthand observations.

The High Commissioner’s itinerary also includes Khartoum State, where he is expected to arrive on Sunday to meet with officials and review the state authorities’ program for relocating refugees from several neighboring countries to designated refugee camps, whether on the border with South Sudan or the Ethiopian and Eritrean borders.

Following his visit to Khartoum, the High Commissioner and his team are scheduled to return to Port Sudan to meet again with representatives of UN agencies operating in Sudan and with a number of state officials to discuss the results of his visit and the forms of intervention the UN intends to undertake regarding the humanitarian situation in Sudan.

The UN considers Sudan to be suffering from the world’s largest displacement and refugee crisis, with an estimated 13 million Sudanese from various states having been forcibly displaced since the outbreak of war. They have fled to neighboring states, sought refuge in neighboring countries, or migrated to other countries where relatives reside.