Sudan (MNN) — The United States envoy to the United Nations is in Chad this week to meet refugees and highlight Sudan’s worsening crisis.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield first visited the Chad-Darfur border as a senior State Department official in 2004. She says the atrocities now remind her of the genocide she saw back then.

“After decades of genocide and displacement of minority black African tribes, now all tribes are in trauma,” says John*, an unfoldingWord partner.

“Tribes that cared very little about killing minority tribes are now themselves displaced.”

War broke out between Sudan’s army and paramilitary forces on April 15, and the fighting hasn’t stopped since. See our coverage here.

“The Sudanese people as a whole are in shock at the absolute void of concern [for their lives] by their government,” John says.

Half of Sudan’s 49 million people need help. U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths says “unrelenting clashes” stop workers from reaching the most needy.

Believers tell John that fighters often force people out of their homes so they can use the structure. “The electricity is off, the water’s not running; you’ve just been kicked out of your home, and it’s 110 degrees outside. Just imagine what that does to the psyche of a nation,” John says.

Over seven million people are displaced within Sudan. Those who manage to escape violent hotspots now face starvation and disease.

Earlier this week, the U.N. said more than 1.8 million Sudanese would flee to neighboring nations by year’s end. Local church planters are meeting physical and spiritual needs.

“No one has any idea what will happen next month [or] the month after. We’re trying to be lean and flexible [and] obey everything that God brings before us,” John says.

Send help to indigenous church planters here.

Most importantly, pray. “Pray for [our] leaders,” John requests.

“Even though they are now refugees, they see the suffering around them. They know the hope that God has resides in them and will speak through them – a God who is not silent and has not abandoned Sudan.”

 

*Pseudonym

Header image is a graphic courtesy of The Voice of the Martyrs USA.