International scientists warned that 755,000 people face starvation in the coming months due to ongoing conflict between rival generals, painting a bleak picture for war-torn Sudan on Thursday.
Around 8.5 million people are experiencing severe food shortages as a result of Sudan’s 14-month conflict.
The most recent findings come from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a program launched in 2004 after the Somali crisis that now comprises more than a dozen United Nations agencies, relief groups, governments, and other organizations.
The northeastern African country descended into chaos in April of last year, when simmering tensions between the country’s military, led by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and notorious paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), erupted into open fighting in Khartoum and elsewhere.
The violence has killed over 14,000 people and injured 33,000 more, but rights organizations believe the figure is significantly higher, according to the UN.
The battle resulted in the world’s worst displacement catastrophe, with over 11 million people having to evacuate their homes. According to UN human rights experts, both sides are using famine as weapons of war.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) anticipates that the Sudanese conflict will displace more than 10 million people, a level that will be reached in the coming days. The world’s biggest internal displacement catastrophe worsens, with the threat of starvation and illness compounding the devastation of violence.
According to the IOM’s displacement monitoring matrix, which provides weekly statistics, there were 9.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan’s 18 states this week, 2.8 million before the April 2023 conflict, and 7.1 million after.
More than half of those internally displaced are women, and more than one-quarter are children under the age of five.
In just over a year, the violence has killed tens of thousands of civilians, including up to 15,000 in one West Darfur town.
The total death toll from the war, however, remains unknown, with some estimates ranging up to 150,000, according to US special envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello.
Across Sudan, 70% of people uprooted “are now trying to survive in places that are at risk of famine,” the report said.
According to the United Nations, 18 million people are extremely hungry, with 3.6 million children suffering from acute malnutrition.
Widespread starvation has plagued Sudan for months, but humanitarian groups claim a lack of data has prevented an official declaration of famine.
At least 500,000 of the individuals taking refuge in the city, according to UNICEF, are refugees from other parts of Sudan. Food aid deliveries to Darfur are restricted, and there is a shortage of food, medication, and other necessities. There are 1.7 million individuals in the region who are at emergency levels of hunger, according to the World Food Program.
Aid is unable to reach the appropriate locations because RSF soldiers are robbing humanitarian supplies, worsening the situation and driving some parts of the nation toward starvation.
Executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale’s School of Public Health–who incidentally runs a research project that monitors the conflict in Sudan, Nathaniel Raymond—asked, “What will happen when the RSF takes El Fasher? Exactly what is happening in every other place they control […] There is Hiroshima- and Nagasaki-level casualty potential,” referring to the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II that killed up to 225,000 people, reported Foreign Policy magazine.
The RSF has regularly besieged and attacked entire communities across the country, and they are infamous for extensive plundering, as well as sexual and ethnic abuse.
After years of protracted crisis, widespread civil war broke out in mid-April 2023 when heavy fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF erupted in the capital Khartoum, and quickly spread throughout the country, which has a population of almost 50 million.