Sudan: Starvation crisis reaches historic proportions

As the heads of humanitarian organisations operating in Sudan, we urgently call on the international community to address the immense hunger crisis within the country.  

We cannot be clearer: Sudan is experiencing a starvation crisis of historic proportions. And yet, the silence is deafening. People are dying of hunger, every day, and yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions. 

Every opportunity to head-off the worst of this situation has been missed, and now the people of Sudan face a crisis unmatched in decades. As the peak of the lean season approaches, widespread death and suffering is advancing across the county. Children are starving to death.  

More than 25 million people – more than half the population – are suffering acute food insecurity. 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.  

International attention and action have amounted to too little, too late. Currently the Humanitarian Response Plan is only 41 per cent funded, with much of this funding arriving too late to prevent deaths from starvation. Pressure must be applied to ensure that humanitarian aid can flow in and reach those who will otherwise pay with their lives.  

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. The conflict significantly impacted food production, destroying agriculture and livestock sectors. Staff also witness the weaponisation of food on a mass scale, in areas held by both sides of the conflict.  In June alone, about 1.78 million people have had no access to critical humanitarian assistance due to logistics constraints, arbitrary denials, and bureaucratic obstruction. Even where aid is getting through, it is in such scarce supply that meagre individual rations are being divided between groups of people. In some places, ten-person households have received 2kg of millet to last an entire month – this is not enough even for three days. Such is the situation for many in “fortunate” areas where some aid is getting through. 

The level of suffering endured by the Sudanese people in recent months is impossible to express with words alone. Their endurance and resilience will be in vain if we continue to look the other way. The indifference must end.

Signed:   

Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council 

Charlotte Slente, Secretary General of the Danish Refugee Council 

Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Corps