The Pontifical charity foundation, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) International, has launched an emergency campaign in Portugal to raise funds to support refugees in the ongoing war in Sudan who have found refuge in neighboring South Sudan.

The Catholic charity foundation describes the civil war in Sudan that broke out on 15 April 2023 as one of the forgotten wars in the world, adding that the violence involved has already caused thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people and refugees.

According to Catarina Martins de Bettencourt, ACN’s Director of the Portuguese secretariat, the war in Sudan is also causing a serious humanitarian situation in South Sudan.

“South Sudan is experiencing one of the most challenging phases in its short history,” says Catarina in a Thursday, June 27 ACN report.

She adds, “The war in neighboring Sudan is causing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, forcing thousands of people to flee. These families, stripped of everything, are now seeking refuge and hope in South Sudan, a country where almost everything is missing.”

According to the ACN official, it is in situations such as the one in South Sudan that the charity foundation “comes into action.”

To support the victims of the Sudanese war, specifically those now living in South Sudan, ACN says it has launched an awareness campaign in Portugal, and is seeking to help the Church in South Sudan, the neighboring country that is trying to welcome, as best it can, thousands of desperate people fleeing war and hunger.

ACN finds it “dramatic” that the war in Sudan in which an estimated 15 million people have been killed and 8.6 million displaced has received very little media coverage.

Additionally, the war has left 25 million people in dire need of humanitarian assistance where an estimated 18 million are facing severe hunger.

ACN estimates that there will be around 10.7 million displaced people and refugees, which, according to the charity foundation, “represents one of the biggest humanitarian crises on the Planet.”

 “Dramatically for these populations, this situation is hardly talked about, and this is, in fact, one of the forgotten wars in the world,” ACN says of the conflict between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary force under General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, and army units of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) that are loyal to the head of Sudan's transitional governing Sovereign Council, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

In its campaign, ACN is circulating letters to homes of the foundation’s benefactors, bearing the witness of Church leaders in South Sudan who speak of the humanitarian crisis caused by the Sudanese war.

In the letter, for instance, Stephen Ameyu Martin Cardinal Mulla, the Archbishop of South Sudan’s Catholic Archdiocese of Juba speaks about the needs of the refugees being “gigantic ”.

“Please come to the aid of these displaced people who have no food, no water, no tents or basic necessities,” the South Sudanese Cardinal says, adding that all the refugees who crossed the border, fled the war in Sudan and are now with nothing. “They left everything behind, running for their lives,” he says.