South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Awan Achiek
Three humanitarian agencies on Tuesday said Sudan is faced with a historic hunger crisis amid its civil war and called on the international community to address the immense hunger crisis within the country.
Sudan is facing “a starvation crisis of historic proportions”, according to a joint statement issued by the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Danish Refugee Council and Mercy Corps.
“People are dying of hunger every day and yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions,” it said.
It said the opportunity to head-off the worst of this situation has been missed putting the people of Sudan in a crisis unmatched in decades.
“As the peak of the lean season approaches, widespread death and suffering is advancing across the country. Children are starving to death.”
It said more than 25 million people – more than half the population – are suffering acute food insecurity, adding that many families have for months been reduced to one meal a day and have been forced to eat leaves or insects.
“The people of Sudan have shown immense resilience and strength over the past 17 months, they now have nowhere left to turn,” it disclosed.
It said currently the Humanitarian Response Plan is only 41 per cent funded, with much of this funding arriving too late to prevent deaths from starvation.
The aid agencies stressed the need for pressure to be applied on humanitarian actors to ensure that humanitarian aid flows in and reaches those mostly affected by conflict.
“Our teams in Sudan have spoken of the huge loss of life resulting from the extreme violence that has swept the country, and now tell us that famine will likely eclipse that death toll,” they noted.
They said Sudan’s conflict significantly impacted food production, destroying agriculture and livestock sectors.
They added that their staff witnessed the weaponization of food on a mass scale, in areas held by both sides of the conflict.
In June alone, about 1.78 million people had no access to critical humanitarian assistance due to logistics constraints, arbitrary denials, and bureaucratic obstruction.
Rival generals from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group have been locked in a brutal power struggle in Sudan since April 2023.
The bloody fighting has displaced more than 10 million people and killed thousands.
At the United States-brokered peace talks in Switzerland last month, mediators said the warring parties had agreed to improve access to humanitarian aid, with two routes identified to ensure the flow of resources to civilians.
But the absence of the Sudanese army during the 10-day discussions hindered progress towards a ceasefire.
