Politics Famine spreads in Sudan - 600,000 people affected
A famine is spreading in the civil war-torn country of Sudan. According to the World Food Program (WFP) and the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), independent experts have identified the criteria for famine in at least five areas of the country.
24.12.2024, 17:56
SDA
In addition to the SamSam refugee camp, where a famine was first reported in August, three other camps in North Darfur are also affected. More than 600,000 people there are suffering from catastrophic hunger.
"These findings mark an alarming escalation of hunger and malnutrition - at a time that is normally harvest time, when food availability should be at its highest," the UN agencies' joint press release said.
Famine is expected to break out in five other areas of North Darfur, including the city of El Fascher, by May 2025. Parts of the capital Khartoum and the city of Al Jazeera could also face famine, which cannot be confirmed due to a lack of current data.
Strict criteria for declaring a famine
A famine is the worst - and rarest - form of hunger crisis. It corresponds to the highest level on the scale of one to five of the so-called Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). The IPC levels are a globally recognized method of assessing the degree of food insecurity.
At level five, at least one fifth of all households experience extreme food shortages and at least two adults or four children per 10,000 people die of acute malnutrition every day.
More than half of the population affected by hunger
According to the figures, at least 638,000 people in Sudan are now living in famine conditions. A further 8.1 million are in an acute emergency situation (IPC level four). In total, more than 24.6 million people - more than half of the Sudanese population - are affected by acute food insecurity (IPC level 3 or higher).
Expert: Starving people are getting weaker and dying
"A protracted famine is taking hold in Sudan," explained WFP expert Jean-Martin Bauer. "People are getting weaker and weaker and dying because they have had little or no access to food for months."
According to the experts, the civil war and the associated displacement of people as well as the severely restricted access for humanitarian aid are the main causes of the worsening hunger crisis.
A bloody power struggle between de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo has been raging in Sudan in north-east Africa since April 2023 and has developed into a regional proxy war. Daglo's militia RSF, which according to experts is supported by the United Arab Emirates, controls most of the western province of Darfur. More than eleven million people have fled the nationwide fighting, around half of them children and young people.
