, Khartoum— The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized a briefing around the outcome of the Floods Rapid Assessment on Agriculture and food security. The briefing was held at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Ewaa Hotel Khartoum. The briefing was addressed by the Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Minister of Labor and Social Development in her capacity as the Chair of the National Emergency Committee on rehabilitation of flood affected communities in the presence of the Minister of Animal Resources, FAO Representative and some key donors resident in the country.

In her welcoming remarks, Minister of Labor and Social Development Ms Leena Al Sheikh stated that  the year 2020 was a very threatening year and disasters drove unplanned consequences such as  Gender-based violence (GVB),among other events has increased during the this year of crisis and called rapid responds to mitigate the impacts the disasters and refocus of programmes on building resilience across all sectors of the farming communities.

On the other hand Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources Eng. Abdul Gadir Turkawi highlighted the impact of floods in Blue Nile and Sinnar states during his visit with FAO Sudan team and FAO's Director of Emergency and Resilience Mr. Dominique, he conveyed to the audience that the two states were hit badly by the floods and the people lost their crops for this planting season.

FAO representative Dr. Babagana Ahmadu welcomed the audience and thanked them for attending the briefing. This was followed by presentation of the outcome of a Rapid Assessment of the impact of the floods across the country. In the presentation of the assessment,  Mr. Adam Yao, Deputy FAO Representative in Sudan reiterated the numerous challenges facing Sudan notably the combination of economic crisis compounded by set of complex and intersecting factors such as COVID-19 pandemic, threats from Desert locust infestation and  now floods that  resulted in  9.6 million people in acute food crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity. Dr. Babagana concluded by calling on 4development partners and  donors to step forward  and  support those affected by the disaster and prevent the situation from getting worst.

"We need to mobilize resources and put all efforts together" said Babagana, that day when I met the affected farmers they had nothing to eat" he added.

Babagana also indicated the need to act urgently to prevent the affected communities from  adopting negative coping mechanisms such as  borrowing and selling productive assets to access food as this would impact negatively on their livelihoods and make recovery difficult.

So far, about 22 percent of affected localities have received assistance from the Government, humanitarian actors and non-governmental organizations. Further assistance is needed urgently and additional funds are required to maintain livelihood interventions and provide necessary emergency and recovery support.