Nearly 230,000 children, pregnant women and new mothers are at risk of “starving to death” in the coming months in Sudan, a country torn apart for nearly a year by two generals’ merciless war for power, a non-governmental organization warned today. Save the Children.
The fighting has killed thousands of people – there is no official count – and turned eight million into refugees and internally displaced people, the NGO recalls, plunging Sudan into “one of the worst food crises in the world”.
Save the Children estimates that more than 2.9 million children suffer from malnutrition and 729,000 children under the age of five suffer from “acute malnutrition”, the most severe and deadly form of hunger.
Earlier this month, the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) was already sounding the alarm, warning that the protracted armed conflict could “create the world’s biggest famine crisis” in the African country, which is already experiencing its biggest displacement crisis. population on the planet.
Nightmarish everyday life
Bombings against civilians, destruction of infrastructure, rape, looting, forced displacement, burning of communities have turned into a nightmare everyday for the approximately 48 million inhabitants of Sudan.
There is no food
Dr. Arif Noor, director of Save the Children’s branch in Sudan, points out that the consequences of war are often long-term. That there was no agricultural season in 2023 means “that today there is no food”. And the fact that “no sowing is done today means there will be no food tomorrow”, he explains.
“The cycle of hunger keeps getting worse, with no solution in sight, only more misery,” he adds, as more than half of Sudanese, including 14 million children, need humanitarian aid to survive, according to the UN.
The war, which experts say could last years, between the armed forces and the feared Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries has pushed 18 million Sudanese into acute food insecurity, including five million in the last step before famine.
War crimes
However, the international community does not have sufficient funding to offer assistance to the displaced, the refugees, the injured, the victims of sexual violence, while the international justice system is concerned that “war crimes” are being committed in Sudan.
Aid workers, who are prevented from reaching or moving into the country unless attacked by both camps, point out that only 5.5% of the funding needs for efforts to prevent famine have been met.
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