WHAT WE KNOW NOW ABOUT FAMINE IN SUDAN: OCTOBER 20, 2024
“Never in modern history have so many people faced starvation and famine as in Sudan today,” UN experts said.
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• “‘There is nothing’: Farmers in Sudan on verge of mass starvation”
The ongoing war in Sudan has meant farmers are without funding, fuel, fertiliser and pesticides – leaving them at risk of starvation. [all emphases in bold red have been added—ER]
Sky News, October 16, 2024
The ongoing war in Sudan has meant farmers are without funding, fuel, fertiliser and pesticides – leaving them at risk of starvation.
A tarmac road winds through sprawling hectares of farmland bordered by an irrigation canal in Al Jazira state, the centre of Sudan’s agricultural heartland. The idyllic scene of green arable land will be ready for October’s harvest. But just an hour’s drive down this road is the besieged state capital of Wad Madani, where civilians are being terrorised by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as they battle the army for territorial control.
The ongoing war has pushed 14 million people in Sudan to acute hunger and 1.5 million are now either facing famine or at risk of famine, according to the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP). Despite millions of hectares of arable land, the spreading violence has meant that the farmers who fed the country and the region are on the verge of mass starvation.
We stood at a military checkpoint on the edges of Al Jazira’s farms as people moved in and out. Some soldiers were on the back of farmers’ trucks. Others were rummaging through the bags and documents of young men standing by a bus that brought them out of enemy territory.
“The farms on this side have been impacted,” says Abdullahi, gesturing to the road deeper into the state. He is sitting on the back of a pick-up truck full of men and a couple of soldiers.
“But the farms in front are safe,” he adds, pointing to the farms further away. He has been farming since childhood and has a look of sad resignation.
“The war has affected our farms so badly. There is no funding, no fuel, no fertiliser, no pesticides. There is nothing this year.”
As Abdullahi travels deeper into Al Jazira, a farmer called Yousif Hassan drives out. His pick-up truck is full of family and friends riding in the back. They know that – for now – they are the lucky ones. “We know people in a village called Tanoub. They lived there for generations but when the war came they had to flee the land,” says Yousif. “All their lentil farms were burnt down and now they are scattered to different safe places. They left the village empty – not a single person stayed.”
We head back to Gadarif, Al Jazira’s neighbouring state and another farming hub. Here the iconic sesame fields are a site of safety and the community – steeped in respect for the importance of agriculture – are working hard to ease the suffering of those who have fled their hometowns in agricultural states.
Mahad Haj Hassan, a religious school off the side of a main road in Gadarif town, is now a makeshift camp housing 5,000 displaced people. There are currently 280 pregnant women in the camp and many of them are sleeping on mats on the hard ground. Their only steady support is the volunteers running the camp on the ground level as students learn Qu’ran on higher floors. In the corner of the school yard, the tents of displaced farmers are huddled together.
“All of us here are farmers,” says Mansour, gesturing to the men, women and children all around him. “The RSF came into our homes – attacking people, torturing people and killing people.”
He adds: “We left our homes and our elderly – who later died of hunger. We left our farms. We grew wheat, sugar cane, eggplant and watermelon and left that all behind. And now, it is time for harvest.”
“The people here came with nothing, only what they escaped with. Yes, they are coming from farming areas but they have nothing now to sustain themselves,” says Fatma Adam Hassan, head of the Agricultural Development Organisation.
“They are in need so we have to intervene.”
• Sudan faces one of the worst famines in decades, warn UN experts
United Nations dispatch, GENEVA, 17 October 2024
A staggering 97 percent of Sudan’s IDPs, along with civilians who remain in their homes, are facing severe levels of hunger, UN experts warned today, accusing the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of using ‘starvation tactics’ against 25 million civilians in the country.
“Never in modern history have so many people faced starvation and famine as in Sudan today,” the experts said.
Zamzam camp in North Darfur, home to half a million IDPs, faces some of the direst conditions. Other IDP camps in El Fasher are also at risk of famine. Indeed, more than 8.4 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes to locations within Sudan or to neighbouring countries, posing a grave threat to most of their human rights.”
“In order for the starvation and famine in Sudan to end, is for RSF and SAF to stop immediately obstructing aid delivery in Sudan through bureaucratic – administrative barriers, attacks against local respondents and for foreign governments to halt financial and military support of the SAF and RSF. Humanitarian organisations should be allowed to expand their operations and deliver essential food items and medicines,” the experts said.
“It is critical for humanitarian organisations to utilise all available channels for humanitarian deliveries, including lesser-used routes, to ensure aid reaches the most vulnerable populations”. Both SAF and RSF, along with their foreign supporters, are responsible for what is an apparent deliberate use of starvation, constituting crimes against humanity and war crimes under international law.”
In Darfur, Al Jazirah and Khartoum, markets have come under attack, and in many areas the hostilities have resulted in inflated food prices, damaged farms, crops and machinery. Local civil society networks report mandatory taxes on farming and livestock being imposed by the RSF in Darfur, and impediments to humanitarian delivery in Blue Nile State. With the November harvest approaching, many farmers may be unable to plant again due to destroyed infrastructure, rising seed costs and fear of theft and attacks.
“Two thirds of Sudan’s population live in rural areas and their livelihood is being devastated by the war. We urge local authorities to facilitate safe engagement in agricultural activities through support to Crop Protection Committees,” the experts said.
They noted that while the Adre border crossing reopened on August 15, 2024, for a three-month period to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid, the volume of aid currently being delivered through this corridor is not enough to meet the population’s needs. The onset of the rainy season and flooding in eastern Sudan and the northern state have worsened the situation. Though hard to estimate, agricultural damage and livestock losses are significant, and mining and water contamination complicate the crisis. The fear of starvation and famine continues to loom.
The experts expressed dismay that international donors and governments have not delivered their pledges. The Sudan humanitarian response plan, which designates US$1.44 billion for humanitarian assistance, has only received 50.8% of required funding, leaving significant gaps. Before the conflict began, two-thirds of Sudan’s population was already living in extreme poverty, and now even more people are facing the prospect of complete destitution. The experts noted that international humanitarian organisations and donors must increase funding on flexible terms, consider providing mutual aid groups with cash and liquidity, help local farmers to purchase seeds and other agricultural inputs and improve purchasing power through cash transfers to prevent further deepening poverty.
One of the most reliable means of food delivery to civilians comes through emergency response rooms and communal kitchens – civilians-run volunteer spaces that provide food to millions despite the dangers involved. Local communities in Sudan have shown remarkable determination, organising mutual aid groups, running soup kitchens, including on the frontline, and revitalising markets to ensure survival. However, volunteers are frequently targeted, harassed and attacked by parties to the conflict.
“Local mutual aid organisations and solidarity operations in Sudan are the main lifeline for civilians in this war,” the experts said. “They must be better supported and protected by international humanitarian organisations.”
“The world must pay attention to the largest modern famine taking shape in Sudan today,” the experts said. “We call for an immediate ceasefire and a political solution to end this horror and urgent assistance. We have repeatedly raised warnings with the authorities in the past, urging action to prevent this unfolding catastrophe, but the situation has now reached critical levels requiring immediate global attention.”
• Famine is ravaging Sudan, but the world can’t get food aid to millions of starving people
Reuters [Maggie Michael], Sept. 27, 2024,
Sudan’s military and its paramilitary rival have blocked the UN’s humanitarian agencies from delivering aid to large areas of the war-torn country where people are dying from starvation. The country’s food crisis is a grim illustration of what happens when a critical part of the global system for combating famine falters.
More than half the people in this nation of 50 million are suffering from severe hunger. Hundreds are estimated to be dying from starvation and hunger-related disease each day.
But life-saving international aid – cooking oil, salt, grain, lentils and more – is unable to reach millions of people who desperately need it. Among them is Raous Fleg, a 39-year-old mother of nine. She lives in a sprawling displaced persons camp in Boram county, in the state of South Kordofan, sheltering from fighting sparked by the civil war between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary called the Rapid Support Forces.
Since Fleg arrived nine months ago, United Nations food aid has gotten through only once – back in May. Her family’s share ran out in 10 days, she said. The camp, home to an estimated 50,000 people, is in an area run by local rebels who hold about half the state. The Sudanese army won’t let most food aid cross the lines of control into the area, aid officials say.
So, every day after dawn, Fleg and other emaciated women from the camp make a two-hour trek to a forest to pick leaves off bushes. On a recent outing, several ate the leaves raw, to dull their hunger. Back at the camp, the women cooked the leaves, boiling them in a pot of water sprinkled with tamarind seeds to blunt the bitter taste.
For Fleg and the thousands of others in the camp, the barely edible mush is a daily staple. It isn’t enough. Some have starved to death, camp medics say. Fleg’s mother is one of them.
“I came here and found nothing to eat,” said Fleg. “There are days when I don’t know if I’m alive or dead.”
• Famine (IPC Phase 5) confirmed in part of Al Fasher, North Darfur
After a careful review of the recent IPC analyses conducted by FEWS NET and the Sudan IPC Technical Working Group (TWG), the Famine Review Committee (FRC) of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has concluded that famine conditions are prevalent in parts of North Darfur, including the Zamzam camp south of El Fasher. The escalating violence in Sudan, which has been persisting for over 15 months now, has severely impeded humanitarian access and pushed parts of North Darfur into Famine, notably Zamzam IDP camp.
Areas are classified in IPC Phase 5 (Famine) when at least one in five (or 20 percent) people or households have an extreme lack of food and face starvation and destitution, resulting in extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition and death.
The Zamzam Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp is located approximately 12 kilometres south of El Fasher town and represents one of the largest IDP camps in Sudan, with an estimated population of at least 500,000.
The scale of devastation brought by the escalating violence in El Fasher town is profound and harrowing. Persistent, intense, and widespread clashes have forced many residents to seek refuge in IDP camps, where they face a stark reality: basic services are scant or absent, compounding the hardship of displacement. Around 320,000 people are believed to have been displaced since mid-April in El Fasher. Around 150,000 to 200,000 of them are believed to have moved to Zamzam camp in search of security, basic services, and food since mid-May. The camp population has expanded to over half a million in a few weeks.
Restrictions on humanitarian access, including intentional impediments imposed by the active parties to the conflict, have severely restricted the capability of aid organisations to scale up their response efforts effectively. These obstructions have critically hindered the delivery of necessary aid and exacerbated the food crisis, driving some households into Famine conditions.
In the besieged area of Al Fasher in North Darfur, Famine (IPC Phase 5)1 is confirmed to be currently ongoing in Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) based on reasonable evidence2 that all three Famine thresholds were passed in June. It is possible Famine (IPC Phase 5) is also ongoing3 in nearby Abu Shouk and Al Salam IDP camps, though data is too limited to confirm or deny this classification. Famine (IPC Phase 5) is expected to continue through at least October and, in the absence of large-scale food assistance and an end to intense conflict, will possibly extend beyond October into the harvest and post-harvest period.
• Catastrophic malnutrition crisis in Zamzam camp amidst escalating violence in North Darfur
MSF May 1, 2024
Following the devastating results of a rapid nutrition and mortality assessment conducted by MSF in early January, a mass screening of more than 63,000 children under-five, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women, was conducted in March and April. The results confirm that there is a catastrophic and life-threatening malnutrition crisis in Zamzam camp, North Darfur.
Despite having called urgently for support in February when the results of the rapid assessment were published, nearly three months later, MSF remains almost the only international aid agency responding to this enormous crisis – and, as a result, one of the very few able to respond to mass casualty events in El Fasher.
Of the more than 46,000 children who were screened, a staggering 30 per cent were found to be suffering from acute malnutrition – with eight per cent having severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Similar figures were found among the more than 16,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women who were screened: 33 per cent were acutely malnourished, with 10 per cent having SAM. For both groups these figures are double the emergency threshold of 15 per cent, indicating that there is a massive, life-threatening emergency in Zamzam camp.
“In Zamzam camp, there is an acute disaster on a catastrophic scale,” says Claire Nicolet, head of MSF’s emergency response in Sudan. “The situation is critical, the level of suffering is immense, but despite this being known about for nearly three months, nowhere near enough has been done to help those who are struggling to survive,” she says.
With the fighting escalating, we are extremely worried that it will make it even more difficult for the much-needed international support we have been calling for to arrive. Claire Nicolet, head of MSF’s emergency response in Sudan.
“With the fighting escalating, we are extremely worried that it will make it even more difficult for the much-needed international support we have been calling for to arrive. And, with the lean season approaching, we are also worried that there is going to be a rapid deterioration in this already drastic malnutrition crisis over the coming weeks,” says Nicolet.
“The lives of hundreds of thousands of people were already in jeopardy – and now, with the current fighting, even more are at-risk. There is an urgent need for the humanitarian response to be rapidly scaled-up so that this malnutrition crisis can be pulled back from the brink, and for this to happen, it is vital that the warring parties take action to enable safe humanitarian access and the protection of civilians,” she says.
Our teams have already scaled-up our response by opening a second health clinic, enrolling over 11,000 children in our nutrition programme, and opening a 25-bed field hospital to treat the most critical cases. Currently, there are 23 people receiving inpatient treatment – this includes 12 who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and four who are being treated for suspected measles.
• FEWSNet IPC | UPDATE 2 August 2024:
The recently published report by the Famine Review Committee has confirmed our worst fears. A man-made famine has taken hold of one of Darfur’s largest displacement sites: Zamzam camp near Al Fasher, the besieged capital of North Darfur.
• Norwegian Refugees Council, August 5, 2024
Sudan crisis: People are dying of hunger
Zahra and her family can’t imagine a future like this. Living in a public school, sleeping on the ground, lacking everything. Photo captured in September 2023. Photo: Ahmed Omer/NRC
The war in Sudan has forced millions of people to flee their homes and created one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is sounding the alarm to prevent more people from dying of hunger.
In Sudan an estimated 7.3 million people have been displaced within the country since mid-April 2023 and two million more have crossed the border into neighbouring countries. Nearly 25 million people need humanitarian assistance.
• Norwegian Refugee Council, August 5, 2024
“There is no escape from suffering. It has been 15 months of uninterrupted violence and spiralling humanitarian crisis,” says Mathilde Vu, NRC’s Advocacy Manager in Sudan. “When it’s not bullets, it’s hunger that kills.”
More than half the population in Sudan – 25.6 million people – are experiencing crisis levels of hunger, while thousands of refugees in neighbouring countries are struggling to feed their children.
“People are already dying”
“People are already dying of hunger. Our colleagues on the ground in Darfur report that pregnant women are losing their children due to malnutrition, and children are dying of hunger on a daily basis,” Vu continues.
Following 14 months of escalating conflict, Sudan has become the world’s largest hunger crisis. Over half of the country is currently experiencing severe food insecurity, meaning people don’t have reliable access to food and sometimes go more than a day without eating. This is expected to become much worse during the upcoming lean season. “In some regions people are struggling to eat one meal a day and the majority depend on begging, charity, and relief items where available. Some people are selling their roofing to buy food,” says Vu.
In December, the number of families fleeing Wad Madani and arriving to Sennar grew by the hour. Families are forced to set up makeshift shelters outside without basic necessities. Women and children continue to be disproportionately impacted by the hunger crisis. Malnutrition rates among children under five and pregnant and breastfeeding women are particularly concerning.
“One of my colleagues in Kordofan told me how shocked he was carrying a young child a mother had handed to him: the baby was so light, dangerously underweight.”
There is food in the markets, but people cannot afford it. They have lost everything fleeing, including means of livelihood, and prices are spiralling. “This is going to get worse in the coming months. The conflict is spreading to agricultural lands in the east, threatening the food availability in the country and increasing the number of displaced people.”
• Sudan: Catastrophic situation in Zamzam camp, every effort must be made to finally deliver food, medicines and essential supplies to blockaded and starved communities
Doctors Without Borders/MSF, September 13, 2024
As the results of a nutrition screening carried out by the Sudanese health authorities and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) earlier this month in Zamzam camp, North Darfur, indicate a catastrophic nutritional situation that is only getting worse, MSF urges the UN and international stakeholders involved in negotiating broader humanitarian access to consider all options to quickly deliver food and essential supplies in the area, including by airdrops.
“Not only do the results confirm the disaster that we and other stakeholders have been observing and alerting on for months, they also indicate that every day things are getting worse and we’re running out of time” adds Michel Olivier Lacharité, head of emergency operations for MSF. “We are talking about thousands of children who will die over the next few weeks without access to adequate treatment and urgent solutions to allow humanitarian aid and essential goods to reach Zamzam.”
Despite announcement that gave hope for positive developments, for instance following Geneva peace talks, no significant amount of humanitarian relief has reached the population in the Zamzam camp and the nearby, war-stricken city of El-Fasher since the IPC Famine Review Committee concluded that famine conditions were prevalent in the area on Aug. 1 this year. Most supply roads are controlled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) who have made it all but impossible to bring therapeutic food, medicines and essential supplies into the camp since the intensification of fighting around El Fasher last May.
There’s no more time to waste if thousands of preventable deaths are to be avoided. Among the more than 29,000 children under five years old screened last week during a vaccination campaign in Zamzam camp, 10.1 per cent suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM), a life-threatening condition, while 34.8 per cent suffer from global acute malnutrition (GAM), which will evolve into more severe form of malnutrition if not treated effectively and in timely fashion.
“The malnutrition rates found during the screening are massive and likely some of the worst ones in the world currently. It’s even more terrifying as we know from experience the results are often underestimated in the area when we use only the mid-upper arm circumference criteria like we did here instead of combining it with measuring weight and height,” explains Claudine Mayer, MSF medical referent.
An MSF mass screening carried out in March 2024 had revealed an 8.2 per cent SAM rate and a 29.4 per cent GAM rate, which was already twice as high as the 15 per cent alert threshold of the World Health Organisation.
The only food available is from pre-existing stocks, which is not sufficient for people living in the area, and food prices are at least three times as high as in the rest of Darfur. Fuel prices are soaring as well, making it very difficult to pump water and run clinics that rely on generators for electricity. Our staff on site report that for many, it’s impossible to rely on more than one meal per day.
“In such a dire situation, we should be scaling up our response: instead, running critically low on supplies, we are reaching breaking point and were recently forced to reduce our activity to focus solely on children in the most severe conditions” says Claudine Mayer.
“This means we had to suspend treatment for the less severe forms of malnutrition, who represented an active cohort of 2,700 children, and to put an end to consultations provided to adults and children over five years old, who represented thousands of consultations every month”…
“Due to these unconscionable blockages on supplies, we feel like we are leaving behind an increasing number of patients who already have very few options for getting lifesaving medical care” adds Michel Olivier Lacharité. “If the roads are not an option for getting massive quantities of urgent supplies into the camp, the United Nations should look at every available option. Delaying these supplies means causing more deaths…
• Sudan’s warring sides target local aid volunteers fighting famine
Reuters, October 8, 2024
Local volunteers who have helped to feed Sudan’s most destitute during 17 months of war say attacks against them by the opposing sides are making it difficult to provide life-saving aid amid the world’s biggest hunger crisis.
Many volunteers have fled under threat of arrest or violence, and communal kitchens they set up in a country where hundreds are estimated to be dying of starvation and hunger-related diseases each day have stopped serving meals for weeks at a time.
Reuters spoke with 24 volunteers who manage kitchens in Sudan’s central state of Khartoum, the western region of Darfur and parts of the east where millions of people have been driven from their homes since fighting erupted between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
International humanitarian agencies, which have been unable to get food aid to parts of Sudan at risk of famine, have ramped up support for such groups. But that has made them more of a target for RSF looters, 10 of the volunteers told Reuters by phone.
“We were safe when the RSF didn’t know about the funding,” said Gihad Salaheldin, a volunteer who left Khartoum city last year and spoke from Cairo. “They see our kitchens as a source of food.” Both sides have also attacked or detained volunteers on suspicion of collaborating with their opponents, a dozen volunteers said.
Most of the volunteers spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. One volunteer in Bahri, a city that together with Khartoum and Omdurman makes up Sudan’s greater capital, said troops in RSF uniforms stole the phone he used to receive donations via a mobile banking app along with 3 million Sudanese pounds ($1,200) in cash intended for food in June.
The frequency of such incidents increased as international funding for communal kitchens picked up heading into the summer, according to eight volunteers from Khartoum state, which is mostly controlled by the RSF. Many kitchens do not keep data on attacks, while others declined to provide details for fear of drawing more unwanted attention. However, volunteers described to Reuters 25 incidents targeting their kitchens or volunteers in the state since July alone, including more thefts and beatings and the detention of at least 52 people.
Groups that run kitchens there have announced the deaths of at least three volunteers in armed attacks, including one they said was shot and killed by RSF troops in Khartoum’s Shajarah neighbourhood in September. The identities of the other assailants were not immediately clear, and Reuters could not verify the accounts.
“Community kitchens in Sudan are a lifeline for people who are trapped in areas with ongoing conflict,” said Eddie Rowe, the U.N. World Food Programme’s country director in Sudan.
“By supporting them, WFP is able to get food into the hands of hundreds of thousands of people at risk of famine, even in the face of severe access constraints,” he told Reuters, saying the safety of aid workers must be guaranteed.
The RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces did not respond to questions for this article. However, the RSF has previously denied targeting aid workers and said any rogue elements who did so would be brought to justice. The military has also said it does not target aid workers, but anyone who collaborates with the “rebellious” RSF is subject to arrest.
MARAUDING TROOPS
U.N. officials say more than half of Sudan’s population – 25.6 million people – are experiencing acute hunger and need urgent assistance. In the worst-hit areas, residents displaced by fighting or under siege in their homes have resorted to eating dirt and leaves.
Local volunteers founded hundreds of kitchens early in the war that served hot meals – typically a meagre porridge of sorghum, lentils or beans – once or twice a day. But as food prices soared and private donations dwindled, some had to close or reduce services to as little as five times a month.
In North Darfur state, a group that runs kitchens in a camp housing half a million people displaced by ethnically driven violence has repeatedly had to stop serving meals due to insufficient funds, a volunteer there said. A global authority on hunger crises said in August that the conflict and restrictions on aid deliveries have caused famine in the Zamzam camp. Many communal kitchens are operated by a loose network of community groups known as emergency response rooms, which have tried to sustain basic services, such as water and power, and distribute food and medical supplies.
Both the army and RSF distrust these groups, in part because they include people who were members of grassroots “resistance committees” that led pro-democracy protests during the uprising that toppled former autocrat Omar al-Bashir in 2019. The volunteers who spoke to Reuters said the objectives of the emergency response rooms are purely humanitarian.
The army joined forces with the RSF to derail the political transition that followed Bashir’s ouster by staging a military coup two years later, but rivalries between them erupted into open warfare in April 2023.
In the worst-hit areas, local volunteers said they were now being targeted weekly or every few days by marauding troops, compared to roughly once a month earlier in the year. Some have started hiding food supplies at different locations to avoid being cleaned out by a single raid.
Reuters spoke to nine volunteers who fled various parts of the country after being targeted by the warring sides. “These attacks are having a huge negative impact on our work,” Salaheldin said from Cairo. “We are losing our volunteers who are serving their communities.”
In areas where the army retains control, six volunteers described arrests and surveillance that they said drove away people who had helped run kitchens, reducing their capacity to operate.
A U.N. fact-finding mission discovered that, of 65 cases tried by army-convened courts against alleged “commanders and employees” of the RSF as of June, 63 targeted activists and humanitarian workers. They included members of emergency response rooms, the mission said in its report. Both sides have deployed siege-like tactics to prevent food and other supplies reaching their opponents, according to relief workers. The RSF and allied militias have also looted aid hubs and plundered harvests, they say.
The warring parties have traded blame for delays in the delivery of food relief, while the RSF has denied looting aid. Military chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo both said in September that they were committed to facilitating the flow of aid.
DONOR RETICENCE
As hunger spreads, emergency response rooms have set up 419 kitchens that aim to serve over 1 million people daily in Khartoum state alone, said Abdallah Gamar, a state organiser. But volunteers have struggled to secure the $1,175,000 needed every month. In September, they received around $614,000, Gamar told Reuters. In the beginning, most of their support came from the Sudanese diaspora, but the resources of these donors have been depleted, Gamar said.
Aid workers said many foreign donors hesitated to fund kitchens because the groups running them are not registered with the government and often use personal bank accounts. “There’s a lot of risk aversion when it comes to supporting unregistered platforms,” said Mathilde Vu, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s advocacy manager for Sudan. Her organisation began supporting local responders in Sudan last year, she said. “Now we have seen that a lot of NGOs, U.N. agencies and donors are starting to realise that we cannot do any humanitarian response – we can’t save lives – without them.”
Some donors are now working through registered intermediaries to get funding to communal kitchens. The WFP, for example, began partnering with local aid groups in July to help some 200 kitchens provide hot meals to up to 175,000 people daily in greater Khartoum, spending more than $2 million to date, said spokesperson Leni Kinzli.
Volunteers welcomed the support but said it can take weeks for money to filter down to kitchens through intermediaries. Cumbersome reporting requirements add to the delays, they said. “The kitchens work in a sporadic way – there’s no consistent funding,” said Mohamed Abdallah, spokesperson for an emergency response room south of Khartoum. He said his group sometimes has only enough money to provide meals once a week, including in neighbourhoods at risk of famine.
Justin Brady, who heads the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Sudan, said donors need safeguards to ensure funds are used for their intended purpose but have taken steps to simplify the process.
Meanwhile, needs continue to grow.
The arrival of the rainy season over the summer brought flash floods and a heightened risk of deadly diseases such as cholera and malaria, stretching resources even thinner, volunteers said.
Sudan’s currency has fallen around 300% against the dollar on the parallel market during the war, and food prices have risen by almost as much, according to WFP surveys. “In neighbourhoods where we had one kitchen, we now need three more,” said Hind Altayif, spokesperson for volunteers in Sharq al-Nil, a district adjacent to Bahri where she said several people were dying of hunger each month. “As the war goes on, we’ll see more people reaching rock bottom.”
In one Bahri neighbourhood, people line up twice a day with bowls and buckets to collect ladles of gruel prepared over a fire in the courtyard of a volunteer’s home. Standing among them are teachers, traders and others cut off from livelihoods. “We don’t have any food at home because we don’t have the money,” said a 50-year-old housewife, who like others interviewed requested anonymity for safety. “We rely on the community kitchen … We don’t have an alternative.”
• UN warns some 25 million Sudanese risk famine without more donations
Associated Press, September 12, 2024 | Rome
The World Food Program needs better access to people at risk of starvation in Sudan and more money from the crisis-weary West to feed more than 25 million people facing acute hunger, the U.N. agency’s director said Thursday.
“Sudan’s nearly a forgotten crisis right now,” WFP director Cindy McCain told The Associated Press. “There are so many crises going on that people kind of just, you know, it’s just too much and their eyes glaze over,’’ she added.
• Sudan Faces One of The Worst Famines In Decades
Forbes Magazine, October 18, 2024
On October 17, 2024, United Nations experts issued a statement warning that Sudan faces one of the worst famines in decades. According to the statement, a staggering 97% of Sudan’s internally displaced persons (IDPs), and civilians who remain in their homes, are facing severe levels of hunger. The U.N. experts, including Michael Fakhri, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food; Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Special Rapporteur on the Right to adequate housing; Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, accused the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of using “starvation tactics” against 25 million civilians in the country.
As they noted, “Never in modern history have so many people faced starvation and famine as in Sudan today. (…) In order for the starvation and famine in Sudan to end, is for RSF and SAF to stop immediately obstructing aid delivery in Sudan through bureaucratic–administrative barriers, and attacks against local respondents and for foreign governments to halt the financial and military support of the SAF and RSF. Humanitarian organizations should be allowed to expand their operations and deliver essential food items and medicines. It is critical for humanitarian organizations to utilize all available channels for humanitarian deliveries, including lesser-used routes, to ensure aid reaches the most vulnerable populations.”
• Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years
Millions are likely to perish, The Economist, Augst 29, 2024
IT IS OFFICIAL: for only the third time in the past 20 years, the UN has declared a full-blown famine. The declaration concerns a refugee camp called Zamzam, on the outskirts of the city of el-Fasher in Sudan. As long ago as April, Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity, estimated that every two hours a child in the camp was dying from starvation or disease—and since then the situation has got worse.
• National Public Radio, August 21, 2024
“In Zamzam camp we had data that confirmed the acute malnutrition threshold for famine had been passed and that the mortality threshold had nearly passed as early as January,” says Lark Walters, a decision support adviser at the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which is part of the Famine Review Committee.
That January data is now nearly 8 months old, Walters says, but it took until August 2 for the famine assessors to analyze and reach a consensus and publicize their findings.
“It is important to recognize that famine can only be confirmed after many deaths occur and mortality rates reach extreme levels, and so government and humanitarian actors should really never wait until a famine is classified to mobilize the resources available to stop it,” Walters cautions. “In this particular case, there has been concern for several months now. We all saw this coming.”
Indeed, aid organizations told NPR that conditions were already catastrophic at the beginning of the year. Since then, violence has escalated, North Darfur is under siege by the RSF paramilitary group engaged in a civil war with the Sudanese armed forces for over 15 months.
Aid groups such as Doctors without Borders as well as the United Nations told NPR that things have reached a breaking point. They have heard from sources on the ground that people are boiling dirt in water as a last resort to ease the hunger pains of children. Eyewitness sources have also told them that people are selling their children to be married with the hope they can use the payment for food — or giving their children to armed groups to serve as soldiers in return for money.
Meanwhile, since April, when the fighting escalated, both sides in the Sudanese civil war have been blocking humanitarian aid. Each side does not want supplies to reach their opponents. And because the country is now in its dry season, people can’t grow their own food.
• MSF suspends support to famine-stricken camp in Sudan’s Darfur
Reuters, October 11, 2024
Medical charity MSF says it has been forced to suspend work in the vast camp for displaced people where famine has been confirmed in Sudan’s North Darfur region, putting thousands of malnourished children at risk of death.
MSF said it had to halt activities in Zamzam camp following the obstruction of aid around nearby al-Fashir by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been besieging the city for months, as well as the Sudanese army’s systematic blocking of aid to areas outside its control.
The army and the RSF have been locked in conflict for nearly 18 months, triggering a profound humanitarian crisis in which more than 10 million people have been driven from their homes and U.N. agencies have struggled to deliver relief. “Because of the supply blockades MSF has been forced to stop supporting Zamzam camp and leave 5,000 children who are malnourished, including 2,900 children who are severely malnourished, without support,” MSF’s Claire San Filippo told a briefing on Friday.
Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years; millions are likely to perish
• Conflict, Hunger, and Famine in Sudan
CSIS, Published September 11, 2024
In April 2023, fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces spread into a deadly civil war across Sudan. Now, 16 months since the onset of the conflict, extreme violence and restrictions to the flow of humanitarian aid have led to widespread acute food insecurity and the worst internal displacement crisis in the world. In July 2024, a judgment by the Famine Review Committee (FRC) confirmed the plausible presence of famine conditions in the Zamzam internally displaced persons (IDP) camp located in the state of North Darfur. As ceasefire negotiations continue to falter and severe flooding events lead to greater suffering, it remains to be seen whether this recent famine determination will catalyze the response that is needed.
Q1: How was famine determined, and why hasn’t it been formally declared?
A1: The confirmation of famine by the FRC is the first since the 2020 designation in South Sudan; however, it is not a formal declaration, which must come from an independent state or international body, like the United Nations. The Sudanese government has thus far denied the existence of famine in the Zamzam IDP camp, and the United Nations has declined to supersede that decision with its own famine declaration.
The FRC—a team of UN-supported international food security and nutrition experts assembled to assess official speculation of famine—confirmed that famine conditions were present in the Zamzam IDP camp based on analyses produced by both the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Sudan Technical Working Group. The process of famine (IPC Phase 5) classification is a technical one, determined at a regional level when the following three thresholds are met or surpassed: (1) at least 20 percent of households experience an extreme lack of food, (2) at least 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition, and (3) there is a malnutrition-related death rate of at least two people or four children per 10,000 people each day.
In this case, however, the FRC was able to affirm the likelihood of famine in the Zamzam IDP camp despite a dearth of recent quantitative food insecurity data. Utilizing information gathered earlier this year, the FRC considered worsening local conditions and historical temporal patterns of limited food availability in the region. Data collected by Médecins Sans Frontières, for example, suggests that the famine threshold for acute malnutrition among young children may have been surpassed as early as January.
Q2: How did famine emerge in Sudan, and what are the conditions now?
A2: Conflict and a near-complete lack of humanitarian access are the primary drivers of famine in North Darfur and acute food insecurity across Sudan. More than half of the Sudanese population, 25.6 million people, are facing acute food insecurity at IPC Phase 3 (Crisis) levels or greater. While the civil war in Sudan began in the capital of Khartoum, violence quickly spread across the country. As of July 2024, nearly 19,000 people have been killed, while around 33,000 people have been injured in the fighting, and the number of people displaced or in need of critical humanitarian assistance is in the tens of millions.
The current status of famine in Sudan applies specifically to the conditions in the Zamzam IDP camp located in the Al Fasher region of North Darfur in western Sudan. While, at present, the FRC’s judgment does not extend beyond the Zamzam IDP camp, the FRC has also determined that famine may be ongoing in two nearby IDP camps, Abu Shouk and Al Salam, as well.
Additionally, the FRC and FEWS NET do not preclude the possibility that famine is present across other areas of Sudan, with at least 13 regions likely experiencing similar conditions.
The precise population of the Zamzam IDP camp is difficult to determine, but it is currently estimated to be between 500,000 and 800,000 people, about double its population size in April 2024. The rapid population growth of the Zamzam camp is met with already extremely limited humanitarian access, the confluence of which has generated extreme levels of food insecurity and malnutrition.
Global leaders have accused the Sudanese government of intentionally blocking the delivery of aid into Darfur for several months. Before the recent reopening of the Adré border crossing—the primary access point into the Darfur region—just a single delivery of food assistance had reached the Zamzam IDP camp in 2024. It arrived in April with a quantity of aid sufficient for less than five percent of the camp’s population.
Based on observed trends in access to humanitarian aid and assessments of deficits in energy intake, excess mortality in Sudan could reach 2.5 million by the end of this month.