Kenyan President William Ruto on Wednesday urged Sudan’s warring generals to “stop the nonsense” and called for a rethink of the African Union (AU) to better address conflicts in the continent.
Around 1,000 people have been killed and nearly a million displaced in Sudan since battles between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads a paramilitary force erupted in April.
“We need to tell those generals to stop the nonsense,” Ruto told a gathering of African lawmakers in South Africa.
The United Nations has said more than $3 billion will be needed to provide urgent aid in the conflict-ravaged nation, where one person in three already relied on humanitarian assistance before the war.
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Hopes for a ceasefire remain dim after multiple truces were violated in the past weeks.
Addressing the Pan-African Parliamentarian Summit, an AU meeting of MPs near Johannesburg, Ruto said the situation highlighted the bloc’s shortcomings.
“As it is, we have no capacity to stop this nonsense in our own continent,” Ruto said, adding that the AU’s peace and security efforts relied on external funding.
“We need to rethink the Peace and Security Committee,” he said, referring to the AU’s conflict resolution body.
Member states contribute only 37 percent of the AU’s budget, according to the bloc’s 2021 report.
The rest of the money comes from international partners, including the European Union and other individual states.
AFP
