UN Relief Chief calls for truce, protection as Sudan’s suffering deepens

Remarks by UN Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, at event to catalyze new funding contributions to the United Nations-led humanitarian response in Sudan

Washington, DC, 3 February 2026

As you all know, and I’ve seen in two visits in the last year to Darfur and to Sudan, the horrific humanitarian crisis in Sudan has endured more 1,000 days – too long. Too many days of famine, of brutal atrocities, of lives uprooted and destroyed. Women and girls enduring terrifying sexual violence.

Today we are signalling that the international community will work together to bring this suffering to an end, and to ensure lifesaving aid reaches communities in such desperate, desperate need.

I have set out in December our plan to save 87 million lives globally in the course of 2026. I am grateful to many of those here, including the US, EU, UAE and others who are coming forward in response to that global appeal, the hyper-prioritized appeal, that we set out, a delivery plan that we are already implementing to save those 87 million lives.

Sudan is the most important component of that plan. As Ambassador [Massad] Boulos described, we have had so many years of being underfunded, overstretched and literally under attack – we have lost hundreds of colleagues in Sudan, colleagues of incredible courage who’ve been leading this work. So, this is the most important component of the 2026 plan, and that’s why we start here today with this commitment that we will collectively reach over 14 million people this year across Sudan with life-saving support – food, medicine, water, sanitation, protection of women and girls and the vulnerable – throughout the year.

But the money is not enough. Through the Sudan Humanitarian Initiative, the UN aims to work with the Quad and other international partners to:

• protect civilians and aid workers from further atrocities;
• to identify the priorities for humanitarian truce and access efforts, as described by Massad Boulos just now, based on humanitarian principles: neutrality, impartiality, independence;
• and to get out there and find that full funding for the humanitarian response plan, the hyper-prioritised plan, and the key enablers that allow us to deliver – the air assets, the security, the medical support for our teams, the mediation work that has to underpin the access work, and to make sure that this funding works alongside the reforms of the Humanitarian Reset, define more clearly our work and deliver it more effectively, devolve power towards local communities, defend our values, alongside UN80, where Sudan is one of the test cases for our new way of working – common services, common procurement, common supply chains – towards the demilitarisation and peace that Massad described.

We have identified the target locations for urgent action in this next phase. We will work with the [United States] Senior Advisor [for Africa, Massad Boulos], with the Quad, with other international players, to ensure the obstacles – and there are many – to this work are removed.

We will ask the international community to back us, and to ensure accountability for any violations against the truce. We have set a target date of the beginning of Ramadan, in just a couple of weeks’ time, to make visible progress on this work.

I have seen through my visits and heard the suffering of the Sudanese people. And today, we’re saying enough. Let today be at last the signal that the world is uniting in solidarity for practical impact.

In the words of the UN Secretary-General this morning, as this devastating war approaches its third year, the urgency could not be clearer – the guns must fall silent and a path to peace must be charted. The United Nations fully supports the Quad’s work to secure a humanitarian truce – including the demilitarisation of key areas – alongside the rapid scale-up of life-saving humanitarian assistance across the country.

Thank you.