Sudan is facing what the World Food Program calls a “modern humanitarian crisis”, with tens of millions of people suffering from sieges, blockades and lack of aid that have left entire cities starving.
What began more than two years ago as a power struggle between rival generals has since plunged Sudan into a brutal civil war that has killed more than 150,000 people, displaced millions, left a bloodbath visible from space and destroyed infrastructure.
WFP Sudan spokesperson Leni Kinsuri told NBC News on Sunday that Sudan “represents the world’s largest humanitarian crisis today.” “We can no longer forget or ignore it because the severity and scale of it is something we have never seen at this level.”
At least 21.2 million people, approximately 45% of Sudan’s population, currently face high levels of severe food insecurity, according to the latest internationally recognized comprehensive food security classification for assessing hunger and food insecurity. Famine conditions have been confirmed in Darfur’s El Fasher and Kadugri, where “people have endured months without reliable access to food and health care,” the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said.
Mr. Kinzuri explained that while other regions are on the verge of famine, even relatively benign regions remain vulnerable. She said WFP can provide food and nutrition assistance to 4 million to 5 million people each month and has the capacity to support 8 million people, but “the resources available to us are not keeping up with the needs.”
Delivering aid remains extremely difficult in areas where violence is endemic, and conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to shape the crisis.
Among them is El Fasher, which has been under RSF siege for more than 18 months, during which time “no aid” has come in, Kinsuri added. RSF eventually captured the last major Sudanese military stronghold in Darfur in October.
A drone attack by Sudanese militias hit a kindergarten in South Kordofan on Thursday, killing 50 people, including 33 children, according to a local doctors’ group.
The UN aid team in Sudan issued a joint statement Thursday, warning that the violence has “restricted access to food, medicine and essential goods, and restricted farmers’ access to fields and markets, raising the risk of widespread hunger across Kordofan state.”
UN human rights chief Volker Türk warned: “Kordofan must not be allowed to become the new El Fachel. It is truly shocking to see history repeat itself in Kordofan, so soon after the horrific events in El Fachel.”
And the situation on the ground is already dire.
“We are seeing almost the same situation in South Kordofan state,” said Dr. Mohamed El-Sheikh, spokesperson for the Sudanese Doctors Network. RSF “has the same siege, the same lockdown, not allowing food or medicine to enter the city,” he told NBC News, adding that 23 children died from severe malnutrition between September 20 and October 20 this year.
Over the past three months, Sudanese civilians have endured RSF attacks, El-Sheikh said, including widespread brutality and human rights violations, with civilians being arbitrarily executed and key infrastructure such as hospitals, clinics, schools and housing being deliberately targeted in airstrikes.
El-Sheikh said the Sudanese Doctors Network had recorded 19 cases of rape by RSF troops against women who had fled the fighting in El Fasher and arrived at al-Afad camp in al-Daba.
Fighting in Sudan began in April 2023, pitting the Sudanese army led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan, the country’s supreme commander and de facto ruler, against his former deputy, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a former camel trader widely known as Hemedi, who heads the RSF.
Both men previously led counterinsurgency operations in the region, a conflict that in 2005 led to Omar al-Bashir becoming the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court on suspicion of genocide.
Burhan and Dagalo were part of the military establishment that ousted al-Bashir in 2019 after widespread public unrest. Two years later, the two countries agreed to share power following a coup that toppled the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok.
However, their alliance spectacularly collapsed over how to manage the transition to civilian government. With neither side willing to cede power, full-scale fighting broke out, dragging Sudan deeper into conflict and a humanitarian crisis.
With no resolution in sight, the war will only become deeper and more chaotic, Hager Ali, a researcher at the German Institute for Global Area Studies, told NBC News. What started as a two-way struggle has fractured into a tangle of local disputes, with old regional grievances erupting once again and the central authority that once existed eroding, she said.
He added that both sides have moved from “trying to win this war to trying not to lose it,” and that as fighting becomes regionalized, “the front lines get smaller, the conflicts get smaller, the chains of command become more complex,” making it nearly impossible to enforce even a negotiated ceasefire.
According to the United Nations Human Rights Council, nearly 13 million people have been forced to flee their homes in search of safety, either internally or living in neighboring countries such as Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.
The report said funding for local responses is less than 10% of what is needed, making it impossible to cover basic needs.
However, there are signs of recovery in some areas where funding is available and fighting has subsided.
Last year, there were 10 areas affected by hunger, but “now there are only two,” Kinsuri said. Approximately 3.4 million people who were previously at the “crisis” level are now removed from such classification, reflecting limited stabilization in some areas of Khartoum, Al-Jazira and Sennar, and some families beginning to return.
Although these gains remain narrow and uneven and the situation remains dire, “this shows that with access and funding, we can reverse hunger and improve the situation,” Kinzli added. “Humanitarian response can really make a difference if we can make it happen.”
