direction and i have an acute sense of nervousness that i didn't have last time. this as the un security council calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities 15 months after the war started. welcome to the bbc�*s special report on the war in sudan. sudan's brutal civil war has been spreading for months — welcome to the bbc�*s special report on the war in sudan. sudan's brutal civil war has been spreading for months — from sudan's capital of khartoum, to the western darfur region. the country was thrown into disarray when sudan's army, the saf, and a powerful paramilitary group, the rapid support forces, began a vicious struggle for power. and now, as the conflict approaches its 15th month, tens of thousands of people have been killed, and millions

are in dire need of basic necessities like food, water, and shelter. the un estimates that, since the start of the conflict, more than 9 million people have fled their homes — with 24.8 million people in need of assistance. the un says sudan is the world's worst internal displacement crisis. this week, the un's refugee chief visited sudan's displacement camps where over a million sudanese have sought shelter because of the fighting. filippo grandi expressed deep alarm at the scale of the humanitarian emergency, and urged all nations to do �*everything possible' to stop the conflict. let's be very clear. the civilians are the ones that have no responsibility, no fault of their own in this conflict and yet, as so often happens, they are the ones paying the highest price. this war has to stop. peace is the only solution so that we can help properly these people and all those to whom we have no access because of the war.

this week, the un security council demanded an end to the siege of a city in darfur, al fashir. the council adopted a resolution calling for both sides to de—escalate the fighting around the city, and to allow aid in. but the rsf has surrounded the city — burning and looting surrounding communities, and threatening sudan's largest group of internally displaced people who were sheltering there. the un and other major humanitarian groups have issued several dire warnings about the situation in sudan. and, some international bodies have allocated funding to the war—torn country since the war started. in april — just about a year since the conflict started — the international community pledged 2 billion euro in aid for sudan. that's more than two billion dollars. but while the un estimates that 2.7 billion dollars is needed to address the crisis, only a fraction of that aid has been received. to talk about the humanitarian aid crisis in sudan, and the international community's response, i spoke with edem wosornu. she's director of operations

and advocacy in the un's office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs. the sudan crisis is one of the worst i've seen i was in sudan in 2004, 2005, i was in darfur, and the scale and magnitude of the crisis today is 20 or 30 times worse than back then and at the time you recall we saw the news of potential massive loss of life and what people are deeming genocide in 2004, the situation is much worse. 18 million people on the verge of hunger and 800,000 people in darfur and there is a siege of 130,000 people. and we have sudan obliterated.

people are going across the border is in chad, central african republic, and south sudan, it is notjust on the brink, it is collapsing at a very fast pace. and the world must know this. we saw recently the attack on the al fashir hospital and have heard from doctors on the ground about the situation is they are encountering but talk to us about the condition of health care and how many hospitals and health clinics are functioning. thank you for this. 80% of the sudan health system is gone. sudan was the centre of health in the region and i can attest to that. in khartoum you had brilliant health facilities where neighbouring countries came to get support and darfur had some semblance of basic health care. the south hospital going and being destroyed by the fighting is one of the last remaining hospitals in al fashir and we are left with just one.

the surgicalfacilities are gone and basic health services are gone. khartoum is gone and several areas really on the brink. 80% in all of the hotspot areas. that is quite staggering and i suppose as with all conflicts, women and children are particularly vulnerable. it breaks my heart. 80% of most of the crisis we are serving in, 80% of the population in need are women and children in the vast majority in sudan are women and children and you've heard about the horrific sexual violence that is happening in sudan today across the country. i was there six weeks ago injuly last year and unfortunately i spoke to people who had gone through quite an ordeal in different parts of the country as they made their way to port sudan. sexual violence, cataclysmic levels. we have reports of 300 people being interviewed by 0hc art with eyewitness accounts

and stories that were simply abhorrent. and i think it's very clear and we said it, and undersecretary general griffiths has been clear, that people must be held to account. women and children do not deserve what they are going through in the country today. the gender based violence, it's also a violent conflict from start to finish. to what extent is that hampering humanitarian aid efforts? what do people have in parts of sudan today where health services are practically nonexistent? you talked about the humanitarian is and what we are trying to do across country. we have our heroic national staff to whom we take our hats off to all of them on the emergency rooms, the nationals of sudan who have stayed to deliver together with the internationals

where we can be, in port sudan, the un does not have international staff and in darfur because of the insecurity but we have brave national staff who stay to deliver. what i'm trying to describe this access to services that are practically nonexistent because of the breakdown and collapse of the health services. i'm talking about women's access to basic services, maternal care. un women have said 7000 pregnant women could die without access to health services if you cannot get to communities and people, they will die and people are dying. at the same time only 16% of the funding that the un needs or asked for has been delivered upon. why is that? firstly i'd like to thank all of our donors for their continuous support to our global crisis everywhere in the world is ablaze. i think the world is overstretched with crises. this is the worst

we have seen it. we have gaza and afghanistan and sudan, south sudan is on the brink of some sort of economic crisis. and we are seeing the system stretched, so i6% is woefully low across the globe today, however, iam hopeful that our advocacy will yield results and we need funding not in two months, not in a month but to stave off a massive loss of life, for the farmers to plant before the planting season, we need more funding and we also need flexible funding. you briefed the security council this week for the sixth time in four months. what are you looking for them specifically to do and what can they do? the security council is the security arm of the un and there was a security

council resolution which called with specific requests from fighting parties and the rsf, what we call the government of sudan, and we need the fighting to stop and we need people to go back to their lives. let's not forget a country that was the breadbasket of the region. i was in darfur, the best mangoes you've ever tasted, the best grapefruit you've ever had and the jazz era state, the breadbasket of sudan at war. if the war does not stop, people will starve, not because sudan cannot get its own food but because people cannot get access to it on the short answer is they are looking to help whatever is going on in sudan for the war to stop and people to go back to their lives. the violence has squeezed sudan's health care system, forecing essential facilities to close and limiting people's access to services.

the world health organization reports the collapse of the hospital system, leaving the 11 million people in need of urgent care since the start of the conflict without adequate treatment. doctor yasir elamin is one health care provider who's traveled to sudan. he shared with me earlier what he saw there. tell us what you saw in the hospitals in sudan. thanks for having me. i saw two sides to what has happened in sudan and on one side i saw the suffering of the people and what the un described as the biggest humanitarian crisis in sudan now and i saw the hunger. in one of the hospitals i visited in khartoum,

i could see two or three children sharing the same bed and those children are generally skin and bone and fighting for their lives and i saw the extremes shortages in staff and in resources in these hospitals put on the other hand i saw the resilience of the community with people coming together to help one another and the nurses and doctors who decided to stay behind and try to help others in the face of an extreme shortage of funding. this was your second time back to sudan since the conflict began. what difference i do noticed in between visits. i think things are going completely in the wrong direction. when i visited back in october there was a sense there was an economy going on and there were still some sense that there was some law. this time i felt there was complete lawlessness in the worrying thing i saw this time was that ordinary people were carrying guns. there were multiple checkpoints set up by people wearing

civilian clothes and carrying flashing coles, and that was visible in the west of khartoum and in parts of the state as well, so i got this acute sense of lawlessness i've not had when i visited last time. i also had this vibe of increasing tribalism in the country which is again a worrying feature of this war. i came back feeling that we need an immediate ceasefire and an immediate negotiation to end this, because it's clearly, clearly escalating into something that is going to have significant impact on sudan on the neighbouring countries as well. as a sudanese american, how is it to go there and see what is happening and then to leave again? it was very emotional for me. where i visited was my home town and this is where i grew up and it was kind of very sad

to see the streets deserted, to see them destroyed and to see my country which is a poor country to begin with getting poorer and poorer. i felt helpless but again i was encouraged by the heroism of my colleagues who stayed behind in sudan and were doing all that they can with very little help from the international community who try to save lives. they are not only dealing with sick patients with limited resources but they are dealing with the risks that they are facing themselves and a lot of hospitals have been bombed, not only that but dealing with the psychological stress of dealing with the victims of the war including victims of gender—based violence and i've heard in many situations terrible stories about them treating rape victims and trying to help them and again, a defining feature of the war, tragically was the wide use of gender—based violence.

you said that there is very little help coming from the international community. do you feel this is in some ways are something of a forgotten conflict. it is indeed. in april we had the paris conference which committed $4 billion to sudan, and only around 5% of that materialised, so responding to the humanitarian crisis in sudan is the sudanese people themselves, the grassroots organisations and communities, but the international community response has been a little bit disappointing. during this week's un security council meeting this week, the sudanese government accused the united arab

emirates of fueling this ongoing conflict. they say the uae is providing weapons to the paramilitary rapid support forces or rsf, claiming they have proof they will bring before the international criminal court. the uae says the allegations are "ludicrous", and calls them quote "a shameful abuse by one of the warring parties." the uae just this week said it will provide 70 million dollars in humanitarian assistance to sudan. a large part of the civil war is playing out in darfur, a region which faced a devastating genocide and other war crimes just two decades ago. in the early 2000s, up to 300—thousand people were killed and 2 point seven million people were driven from their homes. in attacks mostly perpetrated by the notorious janjaweed arab militias. today's rsf was formed from janjaweed fighters by former sudanese president 0mar al—bashir. he ruled the country for three decades before being overthrown in 2019, following widespread popular protests. he is reportedly being held in a military hospital in sudan and is wanted by the international criminal court on charges of genocide. to talk more about the

challenges to peace, i spoke to susan page — former us ambassador to south sudan — and jeffrey feltman — former us special envoy for the horn of africa. susan, to you first, we've heard there the harrowing testimony from inside sudan, how did the situation escalate to this point? i think it's a combination of factors and one, of course is that the fight in dar four never really completely ended and with the former president bashir essentially formalising the rss into a new paramilitary force in order to cross the rsf into a new paramilitary force in order to crush the rebellion in darfur, it gave a new power centre that the rsf and the sudan armed forces, they were able to stay together for a brief period but ultimately they each want to control the country, the resources and the governments of the future.

jeffrey, the conflict seems to be getting deeper and bloodier with each passing month. what sort of pressure is putting on neighbouring countries? there is absolutely a spill over and people have talked about inside saddam but there is a refugee crisis outside of sudan and countries like chad and central african republic, ethiopia, they are having to house and care these refugees but there is also a political spill over. where you have the neighbouring countries looking and saying, ok, if they are going to fight, we rather have this guy or this institution over that institution. what you have is an internal dispute inside sudan and the deterioration of the situation in sudan but it's being made worse and internationalised by neighbours nearby

and further away who have decided to provide arms financing and in other things to one side or the other and it's more than two fighting forces but there is a deterioration in other malicious and there is really a danger of a complete disintegration of sudan. we heard the doctor saying his country was a poor country but it is getting poorer and poorer. is there a way to rescue sudan at this point? as was stated earlier, sudan used to be a real bread basket, not just for sudan itself but for the region and right now a big part of the problem is with the displacement as the vast mentioned, both inside and outside of the country. it's not the crops are growing completely, there is a big problem but also that they cannot get the food to the places it needs

to go because the forces are restricting the assistance to get to the population that needs it most. just a few weeks ago the head of the sudanese army flatly rejected the us called to attend peace talks with the rsf. is there hope of them resuming at any point? i think there's a possibility but as ambassador feltman noted, the internationalisation of the conflict is one that is so concerning and if there can be some real pressure placed on countries like the uae that are indeed believed to be supporting militarily the rsf while there are also other supporting the saf, if they can be convinced to let the parties get to some sort of negotiated process, they can address the root causes and help the sudanese build a reconciliation tree new disposition in the country. getting to that point is so difficult when the fighting is so frequent and violent.

in many peace process in africa, we have to push for a ceasefire including pushing on the external actors who have influence on the internal belligerence but we cannot wait for that ceasefire. we need to push for the ceasefire and do other things at the same time and one of the things we need to get past the fact that these belligerents are preventing aid from reaching the most desperate parts of the country in the sudanese armed forces are posturing as a government that's preventing aids —— aid from getting into darfur. we have a sovereign right to say who can cross borders from chad into darfur and the un cannot use the borders into darfur. we need to find a way past that. the rsf is losing its way across the territories and beside the rape and gender—based violence its preventing farmers from planting grasps and we need to deal with the fact that sudan is under a lease to different military authorities and we will have to figure out how we can get aid into those we need to find a way past that. the rsf is losing its way across the territories and beside the rape and gender—based violence its preventing farmers from planting grasps and we need to deal

with the fact that sudan is under a lease to different military authorities and we will have to figure out how we can get aid into those areas while we are pushing for a ceasefire and we also need to be flexible with our assistance because as the doctor said earlier, you have these heroic grassroots efforts trying to guess humanitarian assistance past military checkpoints and those that would loot it, and those groups are not capable of applying for grants or un grants. we need to figure out a flexible way to get the type of assistance into the grassroots that have proven able to deliver. but it was also said the response from the international community had been disappointing.

why do you think it has not been able to get a handle on what you are describing there. there are several things. as the un coordinator noticed, there is a great need across the world so part of it is simply governments trying to figure out how to address humanitarian needs and part of it is the fact that i wouldn't call this a forgotten crisis, i call it a neglected crisis. you have a lot of attention paid to crises elsewhere that have taken senior leadership attention to this crisis but it's not simply finances. finance is essential but it's not simply financing, it's figuring out how to overcome the intentional restrictions of these guys with guns and their intentional looting that prevents humanitarian assistance from flowing to those most in need, so it is financing but also putting aside this fiction that the sudanese armed forces representing every government that controls sudan.

the sudanese armed forces is starving its own people when it comes to places like darfur and khartoum and the rsf is losing its way, taking away food, raping and pillaging in the part it controls. susan, what is your view on that? i couldn't agree more. he is absolutely correct. if these two parties and their officiated militia, it's not only the saf on the rsf they are allying with different groups who are more ethnic based, some of whom side the peace accord, but if we can't put pressure on them to stop while also again as the ambassador noted, supporting the resistance committees who are conducting heroic actions to get food and medicine and support along with local ngos and foreign partners to get assistance to people and help fund them and help to give them support, we are not going to help end

this conflict, so we do have to push on all fronts and we cannot wait for someone else to do it. we can lament the lack of funding and a durable ceasefire but we have a lot of work to do and the rainy season is coming in august and if those agricultural products are not planted now there is not going to be a food food to harvest in the springtime. on that note we will leave it, but i say thank you to both of you.

thanks to you both for joining us on bbc news. thanks for having us. that's it for the moment and i will be back shortly with more and from the team in washington, thanks for watching us. stay tuned. hello. the next few days are set to bring some summer warmth, but there is still some uncertainty about just how long it might last. the weekend will bring some warm sunshine, but it's not all plain sailing. a little bit of cloud and rain in the forecast as well. in fact, some rain through saturday morning thanks to this frontal system, a weak weather front that'll be moving its way eastwards, but it will bring more in the way of cloud across some central and southern parts of scotland, northern england, into the midlands,

eastern england as well, and parts of east anglia and the south—east could see the odd sharp shower breaking out through the afternoon. then, a slice of sunshine, but more cloud rolling into northern ireland and western scotland with the odd spot of rain. temperature—wise, well, 15 degrees for stornoway, 23 there in london. and — no surprise for hay fever sufferers, i'm sure — very high pollen levels across most parts of the uk, away from the northern half of scotland. now, as we head through saturday night, we will see clouds and a few spots of rain and drizzle for northern ireland and scotland. more cloud and some quite misty, murky conditions developing around coasts and hills in the west of england and wales. a mild start to sunday morning, double digits for the vast majority. and then for sunday, well, we will see some areas of cloud, particularly across parts of england and wales, perhaps even the odd rogue shower and some misty, murky conditions for coasts and hills.

northern ireland and scotland seeing some sunshine, east anglia and the south—east probably holding on to sunny skies, and the air turning warmer and more humid as well. so, temperatures — 19 degrees for aberdeen, for example, 25 degrees there in london. and that surge of warm and humid airjust continues to work northwards across the uk as we head into monday. monday could be a very warm day indeed, a fair amount of sunshine, but some cloud too. and it might be a bit misty and murky again for some western coasts and hills. but those temperatures widely up into the 20s — 24, 25 degrees in parts of northern scotland, 27 or 28 in south—east england. now, the big uncertainty is aboutjust how long that warmth might last, either because of a frontal system from the west or an area of low pressure spinning up from the south. it does look set to turn more unsettled later in the week, but a lot of doubt about exactly when that might happen and some warm weather

between now and then.

this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. tracey emin is one of the uk's most celebrated artists of our time. she rose to public prominence in the 1980s as one of the ybas, the young british artists,

and is best known for deeply personal works — my bed and everyone i've ever slept with. i was told that there was a good possibility that i would only have six months to live. four years ago, she was diagnosed with an aggressive bladder cancer, which she openly documented on her instagram. 0nce portrayed as an enfant terrible of british art, she's now been made a dame by king charles for services to art. tracey, congratulations. or should i say dame tracey? congratulations. how are you feeling about it? well, i'm smiling for lots of reasons. but dame tracey, i mean, it has a ring about it. it's really cool. i don't think there's ever been one before, and it's good. ifeel like it's a new generation of dames, really. what does it mean to you?

there's nothing like a dame. no. don't get me singing.