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khartoum
'Confirming UN Agencies' Worst Fears,' Famine Declared in Sudan Refugee Camp
"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," said the head of the World Food Program.
Aug 01, 2024
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."
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Civil War Risks Triggering 'Epic, Biblical-Style Famine' in Sudan
"Millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake," warned the head of the World Food Program.
Mar 06, 2024
International humanitarian organizations warned Wednesday that Sudan's civil war risks triggering severe famine unless the fighting stops.
Fighting between rival factions of Sudan's military government broke out nearly 11 months ago and spread rapidly throughout the northeastern African nation of 46 million people. Around 15,000 people have been killed and nearly 6 million others displaced during the war, while an estimated 1.5 million Sudanese have fled the country as refugees.
Those who remain in Sudan are reeling from recent drought and flooding driven by the climate emergency, a potent two-punch combination that has pushed millions of people to the brink of famine.
"The war in Sudan risks triggering the world's largest hunger crisis," said Cindy McCain, director of the United Nations World Food Program, in a statement. "Twenty years ago, Darfur was the world's largest hunger crisis and the world rallied to respond. But today, the people of Sudan have been forgotten. Millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake."
The crisis is particularly acute in and around the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and in the vast, arid western region of Darfur, where one of the warring factions, the Rapid Support Forces, and its allies have massacred, pillaged, and terrorized members of the predominantly Massalit community.
In Khartoum, hundreds of thousands of people are struggling to find food due to dwindling supplies for the communal kitchens on which many depend and a communications blackout. People venturing outside their homes in search of food run the risk of being shot or shelled amid the fighting.
Meanwhile, some areas of Darfur haven't received any food aid in nearly 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.
"We are in grave danger of epic, biblical-style famine in Sudan," warned Jan Egeland, who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, in a Reuters interview.
Egeland added that continued failure to deliver food aid to Darfur soon could mean "a death sentence for millions in desperate need."
According to the WFP:
Over 25 million people across Sudan, South Sudan, and Chad are trapped in a spiral of deteriorating food security. WFP is unable to get sufficient emergency food assistance to desperate communities in Sudan who are trapped by fighting because of the relentless violence and interference by the warring parties. Right now, 90% of people facing emergency levels of hunger in Sudan are stuck in areas that are largely inaccessible to WFP.
Humanitarian assistance has been further disrupted after authorities revoked permissions for cross-border truck convoys, forcing WFP to halt its operations from Chad into Darfur. Over one million people in West and Central Darfur had received WFP assistance via this lifeline route since August, and WFP was in the process of scaling up to support that number each month as hunger and malnutrition continue to skyrocket in Darfur.
Meanwhile, as hundreds of thousands of refugees flee into South Sudan and Chad, humanitarian efforts there have reached a breaking point.
"I met mothers and children who have fled for their lives not once, but multiple times, and now hunger is closing in on them," said McCain. "The consequences of inaction go far beyond a mother unable to feed her child and will shape the region for years to come. Today I am making an urgent plea for the fighting to stop, and that all humanitarian agencies must be allowed to do their lifesaving work."
WFP said it "urgently needs unimpeded access in Sudan to address the escalating food insecurity, which will have significant long-term impacts on the region, along with an injection of funding to respond to the spread of the humanitarian crisis to neighboring countries."
"Ultimately," the agency added, "a cessation of hostilities and lasting peace is the only way to reverse course and prevent catastrophe."
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WHO Official Warns Occupation of Sudanese Lab Poses 'Huge Biological Risk'
The situation is "extremely dangerous because we have polio isolates in the lab, we have measles isolates in the lab, we have cholera isolates in the lab."
Apr 25, 2023
Amid a 72-hour truce in Sudan, a United Nations official revealed Tuesday that that one of the warring parties had seized control of a national laboratory in the capital Khartoum that holds samples of multiple diseases, posing a public health threat.
Dr. Nima Saeed Abid, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Sudan, spoke to reporters via video conference from the African country, where fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, in mid-April.
Abid explained that ahead of the cease-fire, which took effect at midnight, he received a phone call Monday alerting him that the lab "is occupied by one of the fighting parties and they kicked out all the technicians from the lab, so now it is completely under the control of one of the fighting parties as a military base."
"They kicked out all the technicians from the lab, so now it is completely under the control of one of the fighting parties as a military base."
"And that is extremely, extremely dangerous because we have polio isolates in the lab, we have measles isolates in the lab, we have cholera isolates in the lab," he added. "So there is a huge biological risk associated with the occupation of the central public health lab in Khartoum by one of the fighting parties."
While Abid did not identify which side the fighters are on, an unnamed high-ranking medical source told CNN that the lab was taken over by RSF forces.
The WHO said that "trained laboratory technicians no longer have access to the laboratory, and with power cuts, it is not possible to properly manage the biological materials that are stored in the laboratory for medical purposes."
Citing the lab's director-general, CNN pointed out that "the power cuts also mean there is a risk of spoilage of depleting stocks of blood bags."
The lab is near the center of Khartoum and the capital's airport. As the BBC detailed:
It lies just outside the area where Sudan's military headquarters are located, and where a lot of the fighting has been taking place.
The particular geography of Khartoum means key strategic sites which are being targeted, such as military buildings, are close to critical infrastructure.
Both the military headquarters and the airport are right next to a residential area, with several schools and hospitals nearby.
Only a fraction of health facilities in Khartoum are providing services due to a lack of staff, medicine, and other supply shortages, power outages, or attacks.
Along with sounding the alarm about the lab, Abid on Tuesday highlighted other health risks related to the ongoing violence, warning of potential outbreaks of cholera, dengue fever, malaria, and measles. The WHO official also said that since the conflict began, at least 459 people have been killed and more than 4,000 injured, though the actual figures are likely far higher.
Even before the fighting erupted earlier this month, an estimated 15.8 million people—or roughly a third of the Sudanese population—were projected to need humanitarian assistance this year, according to the WHO.
"In areas where intense fighting has hampered our humanitarian operations, we have been forced to reduce our footprint," Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Tuesday. "But we are committed to continue to deliver for the people of Sudan."
As Sudanese citizens and others in the country flee Khartoum and other communities impacted by the fighting, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has approved the temporary relocation of hundreds of U.N. personnel and their families.
"Let me be clear: the United Nations is not leaving Sudan. Our commitment is to the Sudanese people, in support of their wishes for a peaceful and secure future. We stand with them at this terrible time," Guterres told the U.N. Security Council Monday.
\u201cI've authorized the temporary relocation of some @UN personnel in Sudan.\n\nBut let me be clear: The UN is not leaving.\n\nWe will continue to carry out our work inside & outside the country.\n\nOur commitment is to the Sudanese people, in support of a peaceful future.\u201d— Ant\u00f3nio Guterres (@Ant\u00f3nio Guterres) 1682385840
"The violence must stop. It risks a catastrophic conflagration within Sudan that could engulf the whole region and beyond," Guterres said. He called on the warring parties "to stop combat operations in densely populated areas and to allow unhindered humanitarian aid operations," as well as "to de-escalate tensions and to return to the negotiating table."
The U.N. chief also urged Security Council members "to exert maximum leverage with the parties to end the violence, restore order, and return to the path of the democratic transition," declaring that "we must all do everything within our power to pull Sudan back from the edge of the abyss."
The SAF and RSF—led by formerly allied generals, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, or "Hemedti," respectively—have already accused each other of violating the current three-day truce, which was negotiated with help from the United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, and Saudi Arabia.
"On Tuesday morning, airstrikes struck the city of Omdurman, a city across the Nile from Khartoum, with a least one bomb hitting a civilian home," according to The Guardian. "Later in the day, a private clinic in the city was hit by an anti-aircraft rocket, injuring 10 people, and clashes were heard spreading to parts of north Khartoum."
As Atiya Abdalla Atiya of the Sudan Doctors' Syndicate told The Associated Press, "They don't respect cease-fires."
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