Smoke rises from a building next to a damaged car on a street in Khartoum, Sudan. The conflict in Sudan, now in its seventh month, is fast becoming a famine crisis.
With all eyes on the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza, the world must not look away as conflict and atrocities in Sudan put the lives of millions—including children—at risk. The conflict in Sudan, now in its seventh month, is fast becoming a famine crisis. The United States and other donor countries must act urgently to avert a potential famine. Millions of lives are at risk, and the conditions will reverberate throughout the region.
The conflict in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which began in April, has exacerbated the country’s already precarious humanitarian crisis. The fighting has forced a million people from their homes each month. Before the conflict, a third of the people in Sudan were in need of humanitarian aid. In the last year, that number has nearly doubled. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the standard tool for measuring levels of hunger, more than 20 million people (about the population of New York) across Sudan—or almost half of the population—face severe food insecurity. This includes 6 million people (about twice the population of Arkansas) on the brink of famine. According to Unicef, 55,000 children require treatment for the most deadly form of malnutrition.
The tragedy of mass child hunger today in Sudan is already horrifying. But without immediate action, the worst is yet to come. The Sudanese conflict also impacts food insecurity for regional countries, notably Chad and South Sudan, which rely on Sudan’s capital Khartoum—the epicentre of the fighting—as a transit hub. The conflict has disrupted the agriculture supply chain in Sudan. The three broad regions experiencing food insecurity—Khartoum state, Greater Darfur, and Greater Kordofan—are, unsurprisingly, the regions of the country experiencing the highest concentration of conflict.
