Hunger is being used as a weapon in Sudan according to a report by three humanitarian organisations working in the North African country.
More than 500 days into a brutal war – which erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group – the Danish Refugee Council, Mercy Corps, and the Norwegian Refugee Council have said hunger is the primary cause of suffering across the country.
Sudan’s hunger crisis is the world’s largest, with over 25 million people – more than half of the population – suffering from acute food insecurity. Famine has been declared in one area – the Zamzam camp near the city of El Fasher in Darfur, which shelters about 500,000 people.
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The death toll from the war – including casualties from direct fighting and starvation-related causes – has been impossible to measure. In May, US envoy Tom Perriello told a US Senate committee hearing that it could be as high as 150,000.
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In the report, entitled If Bullets Miss, Hunger Won’t, the three international humanitarian agencies said “the parties to the conflict have heavily disrupted the food system, triggered mass displacement and decimated livelihoods. They have also impeded the delivery of humanitarian relief, deliberately obstructing access to aid for millions of people in desperate need.”
One July 2024 assessment, carried out by Mercy Corps, found nearly 25 per cent of screened children across five areas of Central Darfur were suffering from severe acute malnutrition. In one South Darfur health facility, up to five malnourished children were dying each day.
Farmlands have been turned into battlegrounds, the report said. Looting is widespread. More than 90 per cent of factories in the industrial sector no longer operate. The banking system also broke down and is still not functioning in some areas, while extended telecommunications blackouts have become a potential matter of life and death, because of the reliance on banking apps. Some people who cannot leave certain areas end up under siege, the new report said, with supply lines for cash and essential goods, including food, cut off.
There has been widespread looting of aid, while local responders have been attacked and detained, the report said. It accuses the Sudanese army of deliberately cutting off vital supply routes, and the RSF of blocking aid trucks from continuing towards where they are needed. “All parties to the conflict have imposed significant and often unpredictable bureaucratic and administrative impediments in the areas they control, impeding humanitarian efforts to save lives and alleviate suffering,” the report said.
A spokesman for the Sudanese army said: “This information is totally false and incorrect”. He said the army approved “six additional routes in addition to airports and seaports, all at the disposal of the UN” and that the Sudanese government had “presented a comprehensive vision to the UN regarding the management of this process and expressed great readiness to co-operate, but it did not receive a response.”
The humanitarian agencies are calling for immediate international action.
“While a nationwide ceasefire appears out of reach, priority should be given to ensuring respect for international humanitarian law,” the report said. Other suggestions include that food production be boosted, and that cash assistance and other help is given.
The report praised volunteer-run communal kitchens and community efforts, often funded by the Sudanese diaspora, and said more should be done to support them. But it condemned the international response as “grossly inadequate ... marked by troubling apathy and lack of innovation.” While non-governmental organisations began sounding alarms about the risk of famine as early as December 2023, it said, “the UN leadership was slow to trigger the necessary measures,” it alleged.
Last week, a Reuters news agency investigation revealed that the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) is investigating two of its top officials over a series of allegations, including hiding information from donors about their inability to deliver food; downplaying the extent to which the Sudanese army was blocking deliveries; and the disappearance of more than 200,000 litres of fuel. In a statement to Reuters, WFP confirmed that an urgent review was taking place.
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