A woman and children sit with other people displaced by conflict at a mosque in Sudan's northern border town of Wadi Halfa near Egypt on September 12, 2023. (PHOTO / AFP)

UNITED NATIONS - At least 25 million people across Sudan, South Sudan and Chad are struggling with soaring rates of hunger and malnutrition as the crisis in Sudan sends shockwaves around the region, a UN spokesperson said Monday.

The ripple effects of Sudan's instability are palpable, with individuals fleeing to neighboring South Sudan and Chad, "hungry and arriving with no resources," Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told the noon briefing.

The call to action is not just for immediate relief but a reminder of the interconnectedness of regional stability and global responsibility, said the spokesperson

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Due to hundreds of millions US dollars of funding gaps, the World Food Programme (WFP) issued a stark warning about the dire situation, Dujarric said, noting the WFP's difficult decision to "prioritize scarce resources to the new arrivals" means that "pre-existing refugees no longer receive assistance", a move that starkly illustrates the harsh realities of aid distribution in times of crisis.

The UN's persistent alarms over the humanitarian situation in Sudan underscore the urgency, with "18 million acutely food insecure people within the country", many of whom are "trapped in areas of active fighting", Dujarric said.

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As the lean season looms, the UN's plea is clear: agencies need the means to "provide support to families in Sudan" to avert "a hunger catastrophe". The call to action is not just for immediate relief but a reminder of the interconnectedness of regional stability and global responsibility, said the spokesperson.