Overwhelmed by the need in Sudan

The humanitarian situation in Sudan is deteriorating rapidly, says disaster response officer Hielke Zantema, who just returned from visiting the war-torn country. “It will only get worse. There is already little food and because of the war, no new crops are being grown.”

12 December 2024

Disaster response officer Hielke Zantema on hunger in Sudan

Hielke Zantema has been to many crisis areas in the years he has worked for ZOA. He has seen devastation in Ukraine, hunger in Madagascar and South Sudan, and helped earthquake victims in Indonesia. Yet the scale and severity of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan has astonished him. “The crisis in Sudan is really huge. The need elsewhere is actually out of proportion, in comparison to what is happening there.”

Hopelessness

Hielke swallows. There is a silence. The room filled with ZOA colleagues holds its breath. They have never experienced their colleague Hielke Zantema like this. But now, he seems broken. “Physically I am back, but mentally I am not quite there yet.”

During the opening of the week at the ZOA office in the Netherlands, colleagues who return from disaster areas regularly talk about their experiences. Due to the type of work that ZOA does, this is often overwhelming. But Hielke has already seen and experienced so much…

This time it is different. The situation in Sudan still has a firm grip on him – even more than a week after he returned home. “It is the enormous scale and the hopelessness that affects me here”, he explains. “What we do is very important, because every person counts, but this is so massive. There are also relatively few aid organisations that venture there. When I arrived I thought: where do you start, to be of significance?”

Interviews

Sudan is inaccessible to journalists, which means that the stories of aid workers like Hielke are the only ones shared in the media. “And we cannot even go into the war zone ourselves,” he says. “That is far too dangerous. However, there is a local ZOA team active in Darfur. We do hear the stories from them about what is going on there.”

Hielke has a young family and notices that the transition is sometimes difficult for him. “When I am in the disaster area I miss my children, when I come home I am full of stories that small children do not want to hear. Then media attention has a therapeutic effect. This way I can tell my story and at the same time make people aware of what is going on in the world.”

Famine

The end of the devastating war is still a long way off. A United Nations resolution to enforce a ceasefire was vetoed by Russia. “Millions of people have not only been driven from their homes, but also from their farms and their land. On all that land, there is no sowing, no fertilizing, no watering and no harvesting. And that while Sudan's food production is not only important for its own country, but also for neighbouring countries. It is a famine that you can see coming from miles away, but that is almost impossible to stop."

When addressing his co-workers during the opening of the week, Hielke manages to recover and shares what he has seen and what is now needed professionally. "According to a recent report, 6 million people will die of hunger between now and 12 months from now if the war does not stop and the food supply remains this poor," he says calmly. "These are cold figures that we cannot imagine. But every human life counts. It is our calling to be there in these kinds of places."