At least 750,000 people are on the brink of starvation and death in Sudan, where a devastating civil war has left more than half of the country’s 48 million people in chronic hunger, the world authority on famine.
At least 14 areas across the country are on the brink of famine, including some in the capital Khartoum, according to the latest figures from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a group of experts from UN agencies and major aid agencies that measures hunger and formally declares famine.
The dire update appeared to confirm warnings from aid experts that Sudan is hurtling toward a humanitarian disaster on a scale not seen in decades.
“This is possibly the crisis of a generation,” said Edouard Rodier, European director of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who was in western Sudan last week. “I have never seen anything like it.”
in a report issued on Thursday, the group said 25.6 million Sudanese, or more than half the population, were in food crisis. Of them, 8.5 million are suffering from acute malnutrition or struggling to survive, while 755,000 are in “catastrophe”, that is, in famine conditions.
When the group, known as IPC, last issued estimates for Sudan in December, the number of people facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity was zero. The latest figures surpass even those in Gaza, where the group said Tuesday that 495,000 people were in the same situation.
Still, the group has not formally declared a famine in Sudan, in part because reliable data is difficult to obtain. Sudan’s health system is collapsing and humanitarian workers are unable to reach the worst affected areas due to intense fighting and restrictions imposed by the warring parties.
Still, few experts doubt that mass deaths are already occurring and that the situation is likely to deteriorate rapidly in the coming months. Back in February, a senior UN official warned the Security Council that 222,000 Sudanese children could die in the coming months.
A more recent study from the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch research group, estimated that up to 2.5 million people could die from famine-related causes in Sudan in October.
“We may not see a declaration of famine, but there is no doubt that the famine crisis is on a scale unparalleled for 40 years or more, and is going to kill hundreds of thousands of Sudanese,” said Alex de Waal, a famine scholar at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told The Horn podcast this week.
Since fighting broke out in April 2023 at least nine million Sudanese They have dispersed from their homes. The US envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello, has estimated that up to 150,000 people could have died, although he adds that it is impossible to obtain exact figures.
Areas where the threat of famine is greatest include the western region of Darfur, where the siege of a major city has raised fears of a massacre; the capital, Khartoum; and the country’s breadbasket in Jazeera state, the IPC said.
“This is the largest humanitarian crisis on the planet,” USAID Director Samantha Power told reporters on June 14.
Powers and other U.S. officials have repeatedly accused the warring parties — Sudan’s national army and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces — of using starvation as a weapon of war.
Foreign sponsors fueling the fighting have also come under scrutiny, particularly the United Arab Emirates, which backs the Rapid Support Forces, and Iran, which has supplied drones to the military.
Yet despite the magnitude of the unfolding crisis, the Sudan war has failed to attract the kind of high-level attention that was lavished on the Darfur crisis two decades ago, when Sudan became a flashpoint. important both for the White House and for celebrities like the movie star. George Clooney.
The United Nations says it has received 17 percent of the $2.7 billion it has requested for Sudan.
“World leaders continue to act as if nothing had happened, expressing concern about the crisis in Sudan,” said Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, director of Mercy Corps, an international aid organization. “But they have not risen to the occasion.”