According to the latest United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative, more than half the population in Sudan – 25.6 million people – face a “crisis” situation. or worse” from now until September 2024, coinciding with the famine season. Learn more about hunger and the IPC’s five levels of food security in our explainer This.
Worse still, 755,000 people face stage 5 “disaster” conditions in 10 states, including Greater Darfur as well as South and North Kordofan, Blue Nile, Al Jazira and Khartoum.
At the same time, 8.5 million people – 18% of the population – are currently experiencing stage four “emergency” food insecurity.
Generals go to war
In the more than 14 months since rival armies – the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces – unleashed their heavy arsenals on each other amid rising tensions over the transition to civilian rule, the United Nations has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in the country’s capital, Khartoum, which has become a battleground and amid concerns about atrocities in Darfur.
Despite repeated calls for a ceasefire by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of the Sudanese army, and Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, head of the Rapid Support Forces, senior UN humanitarians issued a called for a ceasefire. warns that the situation is only getting worse.
The conflict left the country reeling
“We have received reports of people eating leaves; a mother cooked dirt just to put something in her child’s stomach,” said Justin Brady, head of the United Nations emergency relief agency (OCHA) in Sudan, in a interview with UN News.
The risk of famine threatens people, those displaced by war and refugees in no fewer than 14 regions including Greater Darfur, Greater Kordofan, Al Jazira states and the hotspots of Khartoum.if the conflict escalates further, including through increased mobilization of local militias further disrupting movement, humanitarian assistance, markets and livelihoods,” The IPC assessment warned.
Responding to the IPC findings, three UN agency heads warned that a famine disaster was looming “on a scale not seen since the Darfur crisis in the early 2000s”, referring to years of brutal fighting and escalating brutality there that has left some 300,000 people dead and millions more displaced.
Unlike the Darfur crisis then, today’s emergency has spread across the country, with catastrophic levels of famine even reaching the states of Khartoum and Gezira, once Sudan’s breadbasket.
Struggling to make ends meet every day
In a warning, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) say “For half of Sudan’s war-torn population, every day is a struggle to feed themselves and their families.”
The agency head emphasized that this is the first time that stage 5 catastrophic conditions have been confirmed in Sudan since the IPC was established in 2004, while children have suffered the consequences of “degradation”. Rapid deterioration” in food security was “torn apart” by 14 months of war between rival armies.
These three agencies have repeatedly warned of the crisis and have mobilized a large-scale humanitarian operation inside Sudan and neighboring countries, where more than two million refugees seek safety.
End of the war
“An immediate ceasefire and renewed international efforts, both diplomatic and financial, as well as unhindered and sustained humanitarian access are essential to enable Humanitarian response activities are further expanded and enable agencies to proceed with the necessary speed.”
This new data shows a sharp deterioration in food security in Sudan compared to the IPC’s most recent report in December 2023, which found 17.7 million people facing acute hunger, indicated by IPC stage three or higher.
This includes almost 5 million people at emergency levels of hunger (IPC phase 4) while today’s assessment shows that number has increased to 8.5 million.
“New IPC analysis shows that the food security situation in Sudan is rapidly deteriorating, with millions of lives at risk,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu. “We are now providing life-saving seeds for the main planting season. The clock is ticking for Sudanese farmers.”
FAO urgently requests $60 million to meet unfunded parts of its hunger prevention plan to ensure that people, especially those in hard-to-reach areas, can produce food locally and avoid food shortages in the next six months.
“We must act collectively, on a massive scale, with unhindered access, for the benefit of millions of innocent lives at stake,” he said.
