United Nations agencies warn that hunger in conflict-ridden Sudan has reached record levels, with more than 20.3 million people across the country, over 42 percent of the population, facing acute hunger, including 6.3 million who are “one step away from famine.” According to the latest IPC food assessment in Sudan, the number of people projected to be food insecure between July and September has nearly doubled from the last analysis, conducted in May 2022.
That makes “Sudan one of the most food insecure countries on the planet,” Adam Yao, deputy Sudan representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said Friday.
Speaking to reporters from his post in Port Sudan, Yao cited Khartoum, South and West Kordofan, and parts of Darfur as the hardest-hit areas, “with more than half their populations facing acute hunger.”
“Families are facing unimaginable suffering, and I have seen the impacts of this conflict with my very eyes. … I have met with many of the affected communities. They are destitute. They need help”, he said.
But delivering lifesaving food aid to those in desperate need is extremely challenging because of the ongoing fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Response Forces (RSF).
In what is seen as a breakthrough, however, the World Food Programme (WFP), for the first time since the war started nearly four months ago, was able to deliver food aid to West Darfur state this week. A five-truck convoy transported 125 tons of food — enough to feed around 15,400 people for one month.
Eddie Rowe, the WFP’s country director for Sudan, also speaking from Port Sudan, said Friday his agency hoped the truck route from eastern Chad to West Darfur would become a regular corridor to reach families who have little to eat.
“The situation in the Darfurs, and particularly in West and Central Darfur, is catastrophic,” Rowe said. “Our teams passed through towns and villages that are abandoned following a mass exodus of people. Health facilities, banks and other critical infrastructure are destroyed.”
He said women and children who remained behind because “they were too scared to flee” are extremely vulnerable to the escalating violence as “their husbands have been killed, injured or have gone missing.”
“These families are barely surviving,” Rowe said. “Most are only eating just one meal a day, sharing whatever food they have with neighbors and selling whatever property they have simply to survive.”
People who do not get enough to eat pay a heavy price in rising malnutrition rates and hunger- and disease-related deaths. Earlier this week, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said more than 300 deaths were reported in Sudan between mid-May and mid-July due to measles and malnutrition. Most of the deaths were children under 5.
Despite the many hardships and security risks, humanitarian agencies are doing their best to provide aid where needed. Since the rival generals went to war April 15, the WFP reports it has delivered emergency food and nutrition assistance to 1.6 million people across Sudan.
“The situation is volatile,” said Rowe, “and we have to seize often-brief windows of calm to get our trucks into these areas and to safely deliver the food assistance into the hands of people who need it.”
Yao said the Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, was committed to delivering urgent livelihood assistance and was “supporting small farmers across the country, whose production was essential for feeding Sudanese people.”
He noted that the “FAO has nearly completed its ambitious goal of distributing emergency crop seed to an estimated 1 million farmers across 15 states.”
WFP and FAO are urgently calling on the warring parties to facilitate humanitarian access to the millions of people whose lives have been torn apart by the violence and are struggling to survive as food becomes ever scarcer.
Humanitarian needs across the Sudan and in neighboring countries continue to rise as the situation deteriorates. The number of people in need of humanitarian aid stands now at 24.7 million people – more than half of Sudan’s population. Among them are 13 million children in urgent need of lifesaving humanitarian support.
Since clashes between the two warring factions began nearly four months ago, nearly 4.4 million people have been displaced. While some 3.5 million people are on the move inside Sudan, at least 900,000 women, men, and children have fled to neighboring countries in search of assistance and protection.
The major hosting countries include the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), most of the people displaced in Sudan have fled from Khartoum state and Darfur region.
The revised 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) for Sudan calls for 2.6 billion US Dollar to provide lifesaving assistance to an estimated 18.1 million people by the end of this year. As of August 12, the HRP is only 25.4 percent funded. Of the 566 million US Dollar needed for the Regional Refugee Response Plan (RRP), only 26.2 percent has been raised.
Some information for this report provided by VOA.
Further information
Full text: Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Sudan Acute Food Insecurity Jun 2023 - Feb 2024 report, published on August 2, 2023
https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Sudan_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Jun2023_Feb2024_report.pdf