FAMINE WARNINGS for SUDAN: WHAT WE HAVE KNOWN
www.SudanReeves.org
October 21, 2024
The threat of famine in Darfur has been evident for well over a year. While there have been some voices sounding the warning, far too little attention has been paid by a preoccupied international community to the clearly evident threat. At present, the UN-declared epicenter of famine in Sudan is Zamzam IDP camp to the southwest of El Fasher, capital of North Darfur.
Warnings identified here go back to May 2023 and are posted below; in fact, the evidence of famine in the making goes much further back. I have drawn on research, reports, and public statements by others; but the fullest sense of the threat of famine has been conveyed to me in the Monthly Reports coming to me—now for more than four years—from the skilled and knowledgeable counselors of “Team Zamzam” (Zamzam IDP camp, North Darfur): see www.sudanreeves.org.
- FEWSNet (Famine Early Warning Systems)
- UN organizations, including WFP, UNHCR, and the Food and Agriculture Organization
- Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières, inter alia:
https://msfsouthasia.org/no-time-to-wait-to-protect-vulnerable-lives-in-sudan/
- Norwegian Refugee Council, inter alia:
https://www.nrc.no/news/2023/december/statement-on-ongoing-attack-in-al-jazirah-state-sudan/
https://www.nrc.no/perspectives/2023/sudan-diary-of-a-displaced-humanitarian/
- A wide range of social media postings by those on the ground in Sudan
(A compendium of more recent reports on famine in greater Sudan may be found HERE.)
December 28, 2023
Nearly 5 million people are in emergency levels of hunger”—the majority of these are children, many of whom suffer Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and will die without therapeutic feeding. But the overall census—“17.7 million…the number of people in Sudan facing acute insecurity”—clearly portends famine in many regions and locales during the months ahead. This is normally the time of year when food security is best; but failed agricultural seasons in many states (especially Darfur), the larger collapse of the agricultural sector (a primary legacy of the al-Bashir kleptocracy), and the absence of secure routes for humanitarian convoys carrying food and medicine from east to west ensures that catastrophe is bearing down on Sudan.
November 29, 2023
At this point, for El Fasher and North Darfur as a whole, the primary threat comes from the inability of humanitarian convoys to make their way on the long journey from Port Sudan on the Red Sea (where humanitarian supplies are stockpiled) to the various regions of Darfur, some more than 1,000 miles from Port Sudan. The map below comes from Edward Thomas, a colleague of mine at the Rift Valley Institute (based in Nairobi). Although the report from which the map comes is primarily focused on Sudan’s health system and the movement of medical resources, the map itself is a “roadmap to famine,” showing just how little humanitarian aid is moving along the main supplies arteries in the country west of El Obeid, a primary target of RSF forces.
It is important to note as well that RSF forces have attacked El Fasher, although the army and other combined protection forces there have repelled attacks and retained control of most of the city. But in the absence of humanitarian aid, the people of Zamzam IDP camp, some 15 miles to the southwest of El Fasher, are moving toward the first stage of famine, with disease and dehydration taking an ever-greater toll. Transfer of funds for the project at Zamzam continues to be possible, and the banking system will improve if El Fasher is spared an all-out assault by the RSF. Even so, security for the camp is tenuous and it is impossible for girls or women to move even a kilometer outside the camp without significant risk of sexual assault.
August 22, 2023
With its monthly budget for counselor salaries, fistula surgery costs, food and medicine for the most desperately needy, Team Zamzam does a truly extraordinary amount for the people of Zamzam. But they can serve only a very small portion of the vast population of Zamzam: some 500,000 people when we include the newly arrived (a North Darfur government official has declared that some 12,000 families have very recently arrived in the state). Only with the return of a substantial international humanitarian relief presence will the larger issue of hunger, health, and shelter be adequately addressed—and famine, increasingly likely, averted. But for this to happen, the world must do what is necessary to provide protection for humanitarian convoys and teams on the ground.
July 23, 2023
Many of those fleeing places like Tawila, Kutum and other towns in North Darfur will find their way to Zamzam; indeed, we estimate that some 50,000 newly displaced persons have arrived at the camp over the past few months. In Sudan as a whole, more than 3 million human beings have been forced from their homes since the fighting began on April 15. How will they be accommodated? Will the international community finally step up and provide security for humanitarian convoys making the long—and currently intolerably dangerous—trip from Port Sudan to Darfur and other marginalized regions of Darfur? Can famine be averted? Will genocide at the hands of the RSF and Janjaweed continue? There are few encouraging signs.
June 24, 2023
Without a secure humanitarian corridor from the east in Sudan, Darfur and all its people face the prospect of massive food shortages and a total lack of medical supplies. Air routes from Port Sudan, where most humanitarian assistance remains unmoved, depend upon decisions about whether cargo planes are safe from ground fire. The Wagner Group has provided the RSF with surface-to-air missiles, and a recent assault on the ICRC in Khartoum has heightened fears about air and ground transport.
Even before the fighting began in April, the threat of famine in parts of Darfur was clear. A very recent report from the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNet) offers an authoritative update on what we can expect for food insecurity in the coming months:
The ongoing conflict that erupted on April 15th following the breakdown of security sector reform negotiations between the Chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the leader of the Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (widely known as “Hemedti”), has led to a rapid deterioration in food security conditions, particularly in major urban areas and across Greater Darfur. The swift and unanticipated disruption to trade and market functionality, household mobility, humanitarian assistance, and basic service provision, including healthcare, banking, electricity, transport, and communication, has left millions of people facing critical shortages of food, water, and basic supplies, including in dense urban areas and in greater Darfur, which hosts a large share of displaced and acutely food insecure people.
Before the outbreak of conflict, Sudan already faced a high burden of food insecurity given the exceedingly high cost of living amidst the persistence of poor macroeconomic conditions and intercommunal conflict.
While the current fighting has not yet spread to rural areas [in fact, the latest intelligence from the a number of regions in Darfur suggests that fighting has spread to many rural areas—ER], the likely ripple effects of trade disruptions and price increases in rural areas – particularly at a time when food stocks are already declining and market dependence is increasing – are expected to further exacerbate food consumption gaps and cause an increase in Crisis (IPC Phase 3) outcomes across the country as it heads into the typical lean season period from June to September. Emergency (IPC Phase 4) outcomes are likely to increase among populations that are already acutely food insecure and have low coping capacity, rendering them highly vulnerable to the direct and indirect impacts of the ongoing conflict on food security conditions.
In May 23, 2023 the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization offered this equally bleak assessment:
Current food security situation and likely evolution:
The conflict, causing large-scale displacements and livelihood losses, has severely constrained food availability and access and resulted, after less than one month, in the deterioration of an already difficult food security situation. According to the recently released 2023 Revised Humanitarian Response Plan, 19.9 million people are expected to require emergency food and livelihood assistance in the June-September lean season, if the conflict continues. This figure is 70 percent higher than the pre-conflict estimate of 11.7 million people as reported in the 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan that was released at the end of 2022. The highest prevalence of food insecurity is expected in West Darfur, West Kordofan, Blue Nile, Red Sea and North Darfur States. Unimpeded humanitarian access is urgently needed to support vulnerable households in conflict affected areas and IDPs to avert catastrophic consequences.
The effort by many humanitarian actors will be to engage in a kind of “triage” for humanitarian relief, especially given the massive population of the greater Khartoum urban area. But Darfuri lives are no less valuable, no less prone to the acute suffering of slow starvation, than the lives of the riverine Arab tribal groups that make up most of Khartoum’s population. Our project in Darfur will continue, with what resources we are able to secure or create, and at the very least signal to the people of Darfur that they have not been forgotten…again.
May 29, 2023
A very recent report from the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNet) offers an authoritative update on what we can expect for food insecurity in the coming months:
The ongoing conflict that erupted on April 15th following the breakdown of security sector reform negotiations between the Chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the leader of the Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (widely known as “Hemedti”), has led to a rapid deterioration in food security conditions, particularly in major urban areas and across Greater Darfur.