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The United Nations should declare a catastrophic phase-five famine in Sudan
29 January 2024
Fikra for Studies and Development calls on the United Nations and its humanitarian agencies to announce the catastrophic situation of Phase 5 famine at a national scale of Sudan.
Since the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan on 15 April 2023, a deadly combination of displacement, direct fighting, scarcity of agricultural inputs and destruction of the country’s food industry infrastructure has placed more than 24 million Sudanese (nearly 60% of the total population) in direct need of humanitarian assistance, and about 19.9 million Sudanese (around 49.75% of the total population) in dire need of food aid, with 17.7 million of them in acute need of food aid. The state of famine has affected the whole country in various proportions. In West Darfur, 60% of the total population are affected by acute food shortage. In the capital Khartoum, the percentage of population in acute food shortage is 55%. In South Kordofan state the percentage is 48%. Even areas not affected by war, such as Kassala state in Eastern Sudan, have seen 43% of the population affected by acute food shortage. Furthermore, agricultural areas such as Gezira state reported 31% of the population in acute food shortage. It should be noted that the threshold for declaring famine is 20% of the population.
The size of cultivated land this year amount to 37% compared to previous years. The Rapid Support Forces attacks on Gezira state in December 2023 crippled the cultivation of 1 million acres of food crops for the current agricultural season, while the disruption of agricultural inputs supply chain resulted in a reduction of the wheat cultivation by at least 70%.
The recurrent robbery of World Food Programme (WFP) warehouses during the war, the last of which occurred on December 28, 2023, exacerbated the terrible situation. The RSF raided WFP warehouses in Gezira State, plundering food stocks intended to meet the dietary needs of one and a half million Sudanese civilians for a month, as well as giving malnutrition treatment to over 20,000 children, pregnant women, and nursing mothers.
Food shortages have resulted in massive casualties throughout the country, notably in besieged areas directly affected by the conflict, such as Khartoum and Darfur. The fighting also had an impact on the humanitarian situation and conditions in areas beyond the control of the army and the RSF in Darfur and the South Kordofan/Nuba Mountains, which were already in dire straits.
We urge the United Nations and its humanitarian organizations to declare a state of severe famine in Sudan at a national level and address the situation accordingly. Sudan's nutrition sector has a 75.9% financing gap, which we believe is unacceptable and inappropriate from the international community.
United Nations organizations and international humanitarian aid institutions must increase their efforts to address the humanitarian calamity in Sudan to the extent that these data indicate, as well as the Sudanese people's escalating suffering. These figures are not abstract numbers; they indicate the Sudanese people's escalating, increasingly severe suffering, which the world should pay immediate attention to.
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