The United Nations has warned that families in conflict zones in Sudan may face conditions akin to famine by next summer, while some in the war-stricken capital Khartoum survive on just one meager meal a day.
The UN says that about 30 million people, nearly two-thirds of the population, need assistance in Sudan, double the number before the outbreak of fighting between the army and rapid support forces in mid-April. Eddie Roy, the World Food Programme’s Sudan office director, stated, “More and more people are struggling to have a basic meal every day, and if things don’t change, there’s a very real risk that they won’t even be able to have that.”
According to the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, around 18 million people urgently need humanitarian food assistance, the highest number recorded for the country’s most abundant harvest season.
Those most affected are concentrated in the capital Khartoum, where, according to Reuters, more than half face acute food insecurity, and in the crowded cities and towns that have seen fighting in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.
Governments declare a famine state when 20 percent of households in a particular geographic area are in a catastrophic phase.
Inadequate Aid
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification has revised its estimates of the number of people suffering from hunger upwards as the fighting, which has destroyed local markets and affected agriculture, has expanded.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said last month that the area farmers planted this season was 15 percent less than the average over the past five years.
The World Food Programme and other relief agencies struggle to safely reach people in the most affected conflict areas, having to focus aid in more peaceful regions.
The programme has reached Khartoum, where a few million still live, only once in the past three months, distributing food to 100,000 people in the Karari locality during a lull in fighting.
Only a third of the funding requested by the UN for Sudan in 2023 has been funded, and likewise, the response to calls from the organization for similar crises has been minimal, except for Ukraine, which received 56 percent of the requested funding.
The UN is asking for four billion dollars for the coming year to meet the needs of those affected by the war inside and outside Sudan.
