UN seeks help for tens of thousands of Sudan refugees fleeing to Libya, Uganda

GENEVA (Reuters): The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday it is expanding its Sudan aid plan to two new countries, Libya and Uganda, as arrivals surge.

Sudan is already the world’s worst displacement crisis with some 12 million forced to flee by the civil war and over 2 million being displaced across borders. The latest expansion of the UN response plan brings to seven the total number of African countries taking in large numbers of Sudanese refugees.

The Libya arrivals raise the prospect that the refugees may continue their journey to Europe — a scenario which UNHCR’s chief has already warned about if aid is not provided.

A UNHCR planning document published on Tuesday showed that the agency expects to receive 149,000 in Libya before year-end. It projects 55,000 for Uganda which does not share a direct border with Sudan. “It just speaks to the desperate situation and desperate decisions that people are making, that they end up in a place like Libya which is of course extremely, extremely difficult for refugees right now,” the UNHCR’s Ewan Watson told reporters in Geneva.

Already at least 20,000 refugees had arrived in Libya since last year, with arrivals accelerating in recent months and many thousands more unregistered, Watson added. At least 39,000 Sudanese refugees had arrived in Uganda since the war began, he said.