 The international organization for migration is sounding the alarm in Sudan warning urgent action is needed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe from unfolding. The United Nations Agency says that more than 300,000 people have been displaced because of fighting and the impact is being felt into neighboring countries. The agency's director is Antonio Viterino and he joins us now from Geneva. Thank you so much for joining us. How dire right now is the current refugee situation in Sudan and also if you could talk about the other countries, the neighboring countries as well. All inside Sudan as you said, 334,000 people have been displaced because of the fighting but the situation, the humanitarian situation in the country is very dire because in practical terms the fight is ongoing in particularly in cartoon but also in the second largest city in Niala and the humanitarian actors do not have access to the people that are in need of life-saving assistance but also it's spreading to the countries in the region. Just to give you an idea, 300,000 people from South Sudan are refugees in Sudan and they are going back to South Sudan. 100,000 Chadians are registered in Sudan. They are going back to Chad and these countries are very vulnerable. They cannot go with this mass arrival that we are witnessing. And so you talked about that 300,000 number. What are you forecasting in terms of the numbers of people needing humanitarian support in the coming weeks and months? Well, before the fighting started, 16 million people inside Sudan were already in need of life-basic assistance and support and today the situation is much worse as you can imagine. There is no water. Food is coming to the limits. There is no fuel and there are cuts of electricity and above all, 30 attacks on other facilities have been perpetrated during the fight. So the humanitarian situation inside Sudan is extremely difficult and until now we have not been able to reach out to the people that are in need. So the top priority and I hope that the conversations that are taking place now in Saudi Arabia will allow for a humanitarian pause so that the humanitarian actors can reach in safe conditions to those who are in need. Yeah, I was going to ask you what sort of humanitarian assistance is needed right now on the ground, but can assistance even get to those people that are affected right now? Or is that one of the major hurdles that you're facing? That is definitely our top priority, guaranteeing a humanitarian pause for having access to the people in need because in real terms, only in four states, the situation allows the humanitarians to reach out to the people in need. In the rest of the country, that access is not possible and even more. Several UN agencies at their offices and where ours is looted and WFP tried to reach out with food which is a top priority in the last two days and it was enabled because the convoys of food were looted. So the situation inside the country is a mess and we need to have some guarantees that we can reach the people that are starving and that they are in need of water and medicines. What is your ask of the Canadian government? What do you want countries like Canada to do right now? I must say honestly that the humanitarian response plan to food is very much underfunded. Only 14% has been funded up today and definitely we need to scale up our operations as soon as the conditions are met. As you said, travel is not just in Sudan but also in the neighboring countries, particularly those who have been receiving many people coming back home or Sudanese fleeing the country. And so my appeal to Canada as other older countries is to stand up and provide goods in kind donations and of course financial support for this massive humanitarian operation that is desperately in the entire region. Yeah, I know as you said, you know, even before the fighting started the situation was dire in Sudan. What does the ongoing fighting mean for your organization trying to help those escape food insecurity in that region right now? Of course that we have a very big operation in Sudan, as you can imagine. We have more than 300 staff members who are also impacted by the current fight. We are now assembling them. The United Nations has established a coordination hub in part Sudan, which appears to be a place where we can coordinate the cooperation among the different agencies. And as soon as we reassemble our staff in a specific location, we will be ready to restart our humanitarian operations. But of course for that we need an humanitarian pull. Listen, we appreciate, we certainly appreciate the time today. That's Antonio Vittorino joining us from Geneva.