UN refugee chief Barham Salih slams 'shameful' war in Sudan, urges 'political solution'

In an interview with FRANCE 24, UN refugee chief Barham Salih called the war in Sudan "shameful" and urged the world to end it. With forced displacement at a record high, he warned that funding cuts are hurting people "in dire need". "Efficiency has its limits," he said. Salih also defended the "integrity of the asylum system".

Salih, a former Iraqi president who was himself once a refugee, took the helm of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, in January. He regretted that the war in Sudan, now in its fourth year, has displaced millions and that "hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and maimed and traumatised".

"For this to happen in the 21st century is really embarrassing, to say the least. It's shameful," he said, calling for "a political solution to bring this conflict to an end".

Salih said the impact of US funding cuts had been "drastic", while noting that the EU had increased its support to his agency. He outlined how the funding cuts complicate UNHCR's mission. In Adré, Chad, the agency could only provide refugees with "eight litres of water per person per day", he explained, and a community of some 60,000 refugees in Gambela, Ethiopia, has "only one doctor". "This is not acceptable," the UN refugee chief said.

Salih warned that the asylum system was "under threat" amid a debate he described as "politicised and even weaponised". "Asylum is not competing with immigration control. They are in fact complementary," he argued.