'Confirming UN Agencies' Worst Fears,' Famine Declared in Sudan Refugee Camp

Following 15 months of civil war in Sudan that's displaced more than 10 million people and blocked the delivery of food to desperately hungry Sudanese, the United Nations Famine Review Committee said Thursday that famine now exists in a camp housing hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people in North Darfur.

The Famine Review Committee (FRC) published a report "confirming U.N. agencies' worst fears" about the arrival of a long-forewarned famine in the Zamzam camp. It's the committee's first famine determination in more than seven years, and only its third since its current monitoring system was created 20 years ago.

FRC warned that "other parts of Sudan risk famine if concerted action is not taken," citing a June analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—which oversees the committee—"showing a dramatic decline in food and nutrition security" and 755,000 people "facing catastrophic conditions" in 10 Sudanese states.

Unlike the reigonalized Darfur conflict of a generation ago, the current hunger crisis is affecting almost all of Sudan, including the capital Khartoum. Fighting between rival factions of Sudan's military government broke out in April 2023 and spread rapidly throughout the northeastern African nation of 46 million people. The Sudanese Armed Forces—the official state military—is fighting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and is refusing to issue permits for U.N. food aid trucks to pass through RSF-controlled territory.

"We urgently need a massive expansion of humanitarian access so we can halt the famine that has taken hold in North Darfur and stop it sweeping across Sudan," U.N. World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain said Thursday. "The warring parties must lift all restrictions and open new supply routes across borders, and across conflict lines, so relief agencies can get to cut-off communities with desperately needed food and other humanitarian aid."

"I also call on the international community to act now to secure a cease-fire in this brutal conflict and end Sudan's slide into famine," McCain added. "It is the only way we will reverse a humanitarian catastrophe that is destabilizing this entire region of Africa."

In Khartoum, hundreds of thousands of people are struggling to find food. People venturing outside of their homes in search of food run the risk of being shot or shelled. Fighting around Sinja, the capital of Sennar state, has fueled mass displacement and cut off crucial aid routes.

"Worse yet, the war in Sudan has by now displaced an astounding 10 million people from their homes, more than 4 million of them children—a figure that looks like but isn't a misprint," Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox wrote for TomDispatch this week. "Many have had to move multiple times and 2 million Sudanese have taken refuge in neighboring countries. Worse yet, with so many people forced off their land and away from their workplaces, the capacity of farmers to till the soil and other kinds of workers to hold down a paycheck and to buy food for their families has been severely disrupted."

Even Jazirah state—which is located between the Blue and White Nile rivers and is known as Sudan's breadbasket—is now suffering from emergency levels of food insecurity.

Some areas of Darfur haven't received any food aid in over a year as fighting has rendered it practically impossible for humanitarian workers to operate. According to a February report by Doctors Without Borders, one child is dying of starvation every two hours, and nearly 40% of infants and toddlers are malnourished.

"This famine is fully man-made," United Nations Children's Fund Executive Director Catherine Russell said Thursday. "We again call on all the parties to provide the humanitarian system with unimpeded and safe access to children and families in need. We must be able to use all routes, across lines of conflict and borders."

"Sudan's children cannot wait," she added. "They need protection, basic services, and most of all, a cease-fire and peace."