Humanitarian organisations operating in Sudan have warned the international community about the impending deaths and starvation in the region. The global aid groups, including the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Danish Refugee Council (DRC), and the Mercy Corps, released a joint statement on  Tuesday, Sept. 3, drawing the world’s attention to the unprecedented crisis.

“Sudan is experiencing a starvation crisis of historic proportions,” they announced in the joint statement.  “The silence is deafening. People are dying of hunger every day, and yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions.”

Sudan has been engulfed in a brutal conflict since April 2023 after clashes erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary group. The power struggle between these two factions has plunged the country into chaos, leading to widespread violence, displacement, and destruction. Civilians have borne the brunt of the conflict, with millions forced to flee their homes while others are trapped in besieged cities with little access to necessities. The conflict has also disrupted agricultural activities, leading to a sharp decline in food production.

The crisis is particularly devastating for Sudan’s most vulnerable populations, including women and children, who bear the brunt of the food scarcity. Many families have been reduced to one meal a day, resorting to eating leaves or insects to survive. The peak of the lean season looms, threatening to push the already dire situation into an outright catastrophe.

Children seem to be among the hardest hit, with reports of starvation deaths surfacing as food supplies dwindle. “The people of Sudan have shown immense resilience and strength over the past 17 months; they now have nowhere left to turn,” the statement read further.

Humanitarian workers on the ground reported the damning weaponisation of food supply on a mass scale to further exacerbate the crisis. In June alone, approximately 1.78 million people were denied access to critical humanitarian assistance due to logistics constraints, arbitrary denials, and bureaucratic obstruction, according to the statement. When aid reaches affected zones, it is often so scarce that desperate families are forced to share meagre rations. A household of ten persons, for instance, received just 2kg of millet to last an entire month in some places.

Despite the dire situation, however, there has been inadequate attention from the global community. Aid organisations are also financially constrained. The Humanitarian Response Plan for Sudan, for example, is currently only 41 per cent funded, with much of the funding arriving too late to prevent deaths from starvation. 

“Every opportunity to head off the worst of this situation has been missed,” the aid groups said. “Now, the people of Sudan face a crisis unmatched in decades.”

On April 15, aid groups from France, Germany, and the European Union gathered at an international humanitarian conference in Paris to show support for Sudanese civilians, promising to assist those affected by the war. They committed approximately $2.1 billion to support civilians in Sudan and those seeking refuge in other countries. “We need the international community’s continued support to follow their words today with deeds to help open up humanitarian routes and overcome restrictions ahead of a looming, man-made famine,” the NRC stated then. 

Months later, however, the promised support has proven insufficient to stem the growing crisis, leaving millions at risk as the situation worsens.

In a report titled “If Bullets Miss, Hunger Won’t,” the NRC highlights the escalating catastrophe in Sudan, stating how conflict is fueling a hunger crisis of unprecedented scale. The report exposes the deliberate use of hunger as a weapon by the warring parties. Testimonies from affected regions like Darfur, Kordofan, and Khartoum show the full extent of the crisis is hidden due to a lack of sufficient data. 

However, international humanitarian organisations have called for immediate pressure on the global community to ensure that aid can flow into Sudan and reach those in desperate need. Without this, they warn, the famine will likely eclipse the death toll from the violence that has already swept the country.