Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri on Wednesday took part in a ministerial meeting held on the sidelines of the 78th Session of United Nations General Assembly in New York, with the chief aim of supporting the humanitarian response in the Sudan and the region.
The meeting was organised by Egypt, in co-operation with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the African Union, The European Union, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The event aimed to follow up the outcome of the High-level Pledging Event to Support the Humanitarian Response in Sudan and the Region, which was organised in June, Egyptian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said.
Addressing the meeting Shoukri reiterated Egypt’s solidarity with the Sudanese people to overcome their crisis, as well as Cairo’s continued efforts to enable them to lead a decent life in a safe and stable country, Spokesman Abu Zeid said.
Reviewing Egypt’s political and humanitarian endeavours since the eruption of the crisis, mainly through the path of Sudan’s neighbouring countries, Shoukri said that Cairo is keen to carry on with providing urgent humanitarian aid to the Sudanese people.
He said that Egypt has so far received 310,000 Sudanese citizens, who were added to about five million already living in the country over decades.
The chief Egyptian diplomat said that Sudan’s neighborus should not be left to bear the brunt alone, warning against escalating pressures and burdens on the public service sector in these countries, which is likely to aggravate vulnerability of the host communities, and threaten peaceful existence, prompting more illegal migration, Shoukri said.
The second meeting of the Foreign Ministers Liaison Mechanism of Sudan’s neighbouring countries convened yesterday at the headquarters of Egypt’s permanent mission to UN in New York in coordination between Egypt and Chad.
The meeting is part of the Sudan’s Neighbouring Countries Summit and comes in implementation of a statement released by the first ministerial meeting in N’Djamena in August 2023 and in accordance with the outcome of the N’Djamena meeting.
The meeting was attended by the foreign ministers from Egypt, Chad, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya, South Sudan, along with the representatives of the Arab League and the African Union to the UN, the foreign ministry in Cairo said in a statement.
The ministerial liaison mechanism was established during the Sudan Neighbours Summit held in Cairo on July 13-14, under the chairmanship of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and was attended by the heads of state of the Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, and South Sudan, the chair of the African Union Commission and the Arab League secretary-general.
During the meeting, a roadmap, reached at the N’Djamena meeting was approved to be implemented through the coordination of efforts of Sudan’s neighbouring states to take specific measures that take into account the political, security and humanitarian dimensions to address the current crisis and achieve stability in the country.
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