United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan visited the war-torn Darfur region in western Sudan on Saturday and noted a slight improvement in the humanitarian situation.
However, Annan called on authorities to exert more effort to aid hundreds of thousands of people who have suffered from the conflict and to restore Darfur to normalcy.
The U.N. says more than two million Sudanese have been displaced in the past two years. The organization has labeled the situation in Sudan the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
According to the U.N., recent disturbances have limited the access of relief workers to the Kalma camp, where Annan heard first-hand accounts of continued insecurity and rapes of women and girls. Annan described what he saw during the trip to Darfur as “heart-wrenching.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said this week that food supplies in Darfur are running critically low and millions of people there are now dependent on food aid.
Prospects for farmers being able to sow their fields this planting season are not good, ICRC said, adding that trade in goods and cattle has also declined in Darfur and that migration routes continue to be blocked because of the hostilities.