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famine
Advocates Demand 'Immediate Ceasefire' in War-Torn Sudan as Famine Spreads to 2 More Regions
About 375,000 people have been pushed into famine after 30 months of civil war, said the world's top hunger monitor.
Nov 03, 2025
The world's top authority on hunger said Monday that a ceasefire in Sudan is needed to "contain the extreme levels of acute food insecurity and acute malnutrition" that have taken hold in the war-ravaged African country as it declared famine has spread to two regions there.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a United Nations-backed partnership, said it has detected famine in el-Fasher, the city in North Darfur State that the government's former allied militia, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), seized last week, and Kadugli town in South Kordofan.
The IPC said at least 20 other areas in Darfur and Kordofan are at risk of famine, but fighting between the RSF and Sudanese government forces has impeded the group's assessments in places like the besieged town of Dilling, where the situation is likely "similar" to that of Kadugli.
"Urgent steps should be taken to allow full humanitarian access and assessment in this area," said the IPC.
In the towns where experts have been able to take stock of the humanitarian disaster—now one of the worst in the world, according to the United Nations—hundreds of thousands of people are facing “a total collapse of livelihoods, starvation, extremely high levels of malnutrition, and death.”
The IPC, which rates hunger on a scale of 1-5, determines that famine has taken hold in places where malnutrition has caused at least two deaths per 10,000 people, or four deaths per 10,000 children under the age of 5; at least 1 in 5 households severely lack food; and at least 30% of children have been found to suffer from acute malnutrition.
In the two regions included in the IPC report Monday, about 375,000 people have been pushed into famine (IPC Phase 5), and another 6.3 million people across the country face are in IPC Phase 4, classified as an "emergency" hunger crisis.
More than 21 million people face acute levels of food insecurity.
Towns near el-Fasher are also at risk of famine, including Tawila, Melit, and Tawisha.
Food supplies have been largely cut off in el-Fasher over the last 18 months as it has been under siege by the RSF, which killed more than 1,500 people in massacres last week as it took over the city.
Nearly 10 million people have been internally displaced by the civil war—the world's largest displacement crisis—with many sheltering in overcrowded public buildings with inadequate access to food as well as sanitation.
More than 19 million people in Sudan are expected to experience acute food insecurity by January 2026 as humanitarian aid groups continue to be blocked from getting supplies to starving households and harvests in Darfur and Kordofan are expected to be "well below average due to insecurity, despite favorable agroclimatic conditions."
Food prices are also expected to remain high and ultimately rise in the first half of next year as stocks decline.
"An immediate ceasefire and humanitarian access are a must to prevent further deterioration and save lives!" said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization.
The IPC said only 21% of people in need currently have access to humanitarian aid, and in Kadugli, the aid group Save the Children said that its food supplies ran out in September as fighting there escalated.
Tens of thousands of people in the town are trapped there as the RSF—which is backed by the United Arab Emirates, whose government has received military support from the US—tries to seize more territory.
The IPC previously declared famine in three refugee camps near el-Fasher and in part of South and West Kordofan provinces, since fighting began in April 2023.
The UN has estimated more than 40,000 people have been killed, but aid groups warn the true death toll is likely much higher.
The International Court of Justice said Monday that it is "taking immediate steps regarding the alleged crimes in el-Fasher to preserve and collect relevant evidence for its use in future prosecutions."
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Israel Tried to Destroy Gazans' Peoplehood; It Failed
For ordinary people, survival, continuity, and self-assertion are the ultimate signs of victory against Israel, a country that does not hesitate to use genocide for temporary political gains.
Oct 25, 2025
For the last two years, my social media algorithm has been relentlessly dominated by Gaza, particularly by the voices of ordinary Gazans, displaying a blend of emotions that centers on two core principles: grief and defiance.
Grief has characterized life in Gaza for many years, a consequence of successive Israeli wars, the unrelenting siege, and habitual bombardment. The last two years, marked by genocide and famine, however, have redefined that grief in a way almost incomprehensible to the Palestinians themselves.
Yes, Palestine has endured numerous massacres before, during, and since the Nakba—the tragic destruction of the Palestinian homeland. But those massacres were typically episodic, each distinctively marked by specific historical circumstances. Each is incorporated into the Palestinian collective psyche as proof of Israeli barbarity, but also as a demonstration of their own enduring resilience as a people.
I grew up in a Gaza refugee camp where we commemorated each massacre with rallies, general strikes, and artistic expressions. We knew the victims and immortalized them through chants, political graffiti, poetry, and the like.
The Palestinian nation has emerged even more deeply rooted in its identity, both in Gaza and elsewhere.
The war of extermination launched by Israel against Gaza in the last two years has fundamentally changed all of that. On a single day, October 31, 2023, the Israeli army killed 704 Palestinians, and 120 in the Jabaliya refugee camp alone. Single bombs would annihilate hundreds in one strike, often in hospitals, refugee shelters, or United Nations schools. Massacres were taking place every day, everywhere.
There was no time to reflect on any of these massacres, to pray for the victims, or even to bury them with proper dignity. All that Gazans could do was desperately try to cling to life itself, bury their loved ones in mass graves, and use their own bare hands to dig out the wounded and dead from underneath the massive slabs of concrete and mountains of rubble. Thousands remain unaccounted for, and about a quarter of a million Gazans have been killed and wounded.
The tally will continue to grow, and the degree of devastation keeps worsening, even now that the rate of killing has subsided. But why, then, does my social media feed continue to show Palestinians openly celebrating their victory? Why are Gaza's children, though gaunt and exhausted due to the famine, continuing to perform traditional debka dances? Why is 5-year-old Maria Hannoun, one of Gaza's many influencers, continuing to recite the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and sending fiery messages to US President Donald Trump that Gaza will never be defeated?
To say that "Gazans are built differently" is a massive understatement. I have spent the last 20 years dedicated to academic research on the people‘s history of Palestine, focusing heavily on Gaza, and I still find their collective will astonishing. They seem to have made a shared, conscious decision: The metrics for their defeat or victory would be entirely separate from those used by the media covering the war.
These measures are rooted in resistance as a foundational choice. Core values like Karamah (dignity), Izza (pride), and Sabr (patience), among others, are the standards by which Gaza judges its performance. And, by these profound standards, the people of the genocide- and famine-stricken strip have won this war.
Because these values are often ignored or misinterpreted in war coverage, many have found Gaza’s response to the ceasefire, one of unbridled joy and celebration, confusing. The scene of mothers waiting for their sons to be released in a large celebration in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, was particularly illuminating. They cried bitterly, while clapping and ululating all at once. One mother perfectly clarified the paradox for a reporter: The tears were for the sons and daughters killed in the war, and the ululating was for the ones being released.
News media, however, rarely understand the complexity of the Gaza survival paradigm. Some, including Israeli military analysts, have concluded that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lost the war because he failed to achieve any of his declared objectives. Others speak of some kind of Israeli victory simply because Israel managed to obliterate nearly the whole of Gaza and a large section of its population.
Each side uses numbers and figures to back up their claims. Yet, Palestinians in Gaza view this situation in a fundamentally different way. They understand that Israel's war was ultimately an attempt to destroy their very peoplehood—to shatter their spirit, disorient their culture, turn them against one another, and ultimately eradicate the core essence of being Palestinian.
Gazans celebrate precisely because they know Israel has failed. The Palestinian nation has emerged even more deeply rooted in its identity, both in Gaza and elsewhere. The child singing of the martyrs, the civil defense workers dancing the debka for their fallen comrades, and the woman using the wreckage of a destroyed Israeli Merkava tank to air her laundry—all these images speak of a nation unified by its love for life and its fierce commitment to shared values of valor, honor, and love.
Some analysts, trying to find a more nuanced and reasoned conclusion, have resolved that neither Israel won the war, nor were Palestinians defeated. While this balanced approach can be appreciated in terms of the strategic reading of the ceasefire, it is still profoundly incorrect when understood against the backdrop of popular Palestinian culture. For ordinary people, survival, continuity, and self-assertion are the ultimate signs of victory against Israel, a country that does not hesitate to use genocide for temporary political gains. The core of their triumph is simply this: They remain.
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ICJ Rejects Israeli Claims About UNRWA and Orders Officials to Provide More Aid to Gaza
"Yet another Israeli government lie—slavishly repeated by Western media—collapses," said one policy expert.
Oct 22, 2025
The commissioner-general of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that he welcomed an "unambiguous ruling by the International Court of Justice" affirming that the organization has not been infiltrated by Hamas, as Israel and its allies have persistently claimed, and that Israeli officials must cooperate with the UN to ensure Palestinians receive sufficient aid after nearly two years of starvation policy.
In an advisory opinion, the ICJ ruled 10-1 that as the occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is responsible for providing aid to Palestinians and allowing the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to operate in Gaza.
Israel has sought to ban UNRWA from Gaza since January 2024, when it alleged without evidence that a small number of staffers at the agency had participated in a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October 2023.
Multiple investigations found that Israel had not provided supporting evidence of the allegations, and the ICJ on Wednesday said that the country had “not substantiated its allegations that a significant number of UNRWA employees were members of Hamas.”
With the advisory opinion, said Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, "yet another Israeli government lie—slavishly repeated by Western media—collapses."
ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa said in the ruling, which is not legally binding, that Israel's first obligation is to "ensure that the population of the occupied Palestinian territory has the essential supplies of daily life, including food, water, clothing, bedding, shelter, fuel, medical supplies, and services."
The court also ordered Israel to "agree to and facilitate by all means at its disposal relief schemes on behalf of the population of the occupied Palestinian territory so long as that population is inadequately supplied, as has been the case in the Gaza Strip."
UNRWA has said it has roughly 6,000 aid trucks that are ready to enter Gaza.
"With huge amounts of food and other lifesaving supplies on standby in Egypt and Jordan, UNRWA has the resources and expertise to immediately scale up the humanitarian response in Gaza and help alleviate the suffering of the civilian population," said Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the agency.
Israel began blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza following the Hamas-led attack in 2023, and intensified the blockade from March-May this year after breaking a ceasefire that began in January. More than 450 Palestinians have starved to death, and experts have warned that the many of the effects of starvation on those who have survived, especially children, may be irreversible. A famine was declared in August by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a UN-backed group.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the ICJ opinion "comes at a moment in which we are doing everything we can to boost our humanitarian aid in Gaza. So the impact of this decision is decisive in order for us to be able to do it to the level that is necessary for the tragic situation in which the people of Gaza still is.”
As it has with numerous other rulings by the ICJ, Israel immediately rejected the decision and claimed it was politically motivated. The US State Department also dismissed the ruling, saying it "unfairly bashe[d] Israel" and repeated the debunked allegations of UNRWA's "deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism."
Step Vaessen of Al Jazeera reported that "even if Israel ignores [the advisory opinion], as it’s done time and time again, all the UN countries are obliged to follow up on this court’s advice."
The ICJ is also considering a genocide case against Israel, brought by South Africa.
In September, a commission of independent experts at the UN said Western countries including the US must stop providing military aid to Israel as it found the country was carrying out a genocide in Gaza, citing several of the attacks that have killed more than 68,000 Palestinians since October 2023 and public statements made by Israeli officials demonstrating their intent to wipe out Gaza's population of 2.1 million people.
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