The UN's top humanitarian and emergency relief official has told NPR that why world leaders have not paid more attention to the civil war in Sudan is the "billion dollar question," and called for the United Nations Security Council to "wake up" and help stop the violence.

Tom Fletcher, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, who recently spent a week in Sudan's Darfur region, has called the area the "epicenter of suffering in the world right now."

Speaking to host Ayesha Rascoe on Weekend Edition Sunday , Fletcher described his visit to Darfur. "You're going through checkpoint after checkpoint manned by child soldiers," he said. "You're meeting people who are starving, who've been displaced many times, victims of sexual violence, victims of horrible torture, brutality."

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