War pushes Sudan into famine

Eleven months after a bitter civil war broke out in Sudan between the regular army and a powerful paramilitary group, more than 95% of Sudanese cannot afford a full meal a day.

The communal kitchens that emerged in various parts of the country to alleviate the coup are increasingly suffering from repression and lack of resources.

And the stories of people, especially children, who are suffering from severe hunger or are dying from malnutrition or starvation in the most affected areas are already happening daily.

This same Wednesday, the executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), Cindy McCain, warned that the war in Sudan could trigger “the largest hunger crisis in the world.”

These are some of the images that the conflict is leaving in Sudan, where it is estimated that around 18 million people – around 40% of the population – are facing acute levels of hunger.

More than 95% of Sudanese cannot afford a full meal a day

“The war that broke out in April 2023 has caused the world's largest humanitarian catastrophe, currently fueling a famine of a magnitude we have not seen in 30 years;

and yet they choose to look the other way,” laments Anette Hoffmann, a researcher at the Dutch Clingendael center who has studied hunger in Sudan.

The hunger that the country is suffering is especially alarming because it is occurring in the final stretch of its harvest season (from October to February), a period in which there is usually more food in circulation.

This portends a dire situation in the middle of the year, when some forecasts anticipate that seven million people will face catastrophic levels of hunger.

Factors explaining this alarming food crisis include fighting, a general deterioration in security, a decline in agricultural production, increased inter-community violence, runaway inflation and a meager humanitarian response.

Some of the regions most affected by the war, such as Darfur, Kordofan and Gezira, have also traditionally been areas of great agricultural production, and are where there are the greatest difficulties in maintaining activity in the countryside.

The displacement of millions of people and recruitment campaigns, accelerated in recent months, have drastically reduced the workforce.

And the disruption of the financial sector caused by the devastation of the capital has left many farmers without credit to pay for machinery, seeds and fertilizers.

Hunger is especially alarming because it is occurring in the final stretch of the harvest season, a period in which there is usually more food.

The fighting in Khartoum and looting have also paralyzed the agri-food industry, concentrated in the capital.

And food prices are through the roof.

Although the official inflation rate has not been updated since February 2023, the WFP estimates that it is above 300%.

The coming famine

Starting in June, the most likely scenario is that the country will be devastated by catastrophic levels of hunger, according to a recent study by Hoffmann, the Clingendael researcher.

According to her forecasts, about 40% of the population, almost 19 million people, will then have access to less than half the amount of energy they need.

And about 15%, or about seven million people, less than a third.

The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that malnutrition weakens defenses, which increases morbidity and mortality and facilitates the contraction of diseases, especially among pregnant women and children.

Between May and September last year, more than 1,200 children under five died in camps in White Nile State, southern Sudan, from what UNHCR then described as a fatal combination of malnutrition and a measles outbreak.

Although the official inflation rate has not been updated since February 2023, the World Food Program (WFP) estimates that it is above 300%

The increase in hunger in Sudan is also part of one of the humanitarian crises that is unfolding most rapidly in the world, according to UN agencies.

Currently, 25 million people – including more than 14 million children – need humanitarian aid, and more than six million have had to flee their homes since the start of the war, making this the largest displacement crisis in the world. world.

Between 70 and 80% of the hospitals in the areas hardest hit by the conflict are not operational, so around 65% of the population does not have access to health care.

And 19 million school-age children are not being able to continue their education.

The World Bank estimates that the Sudanese economy contracted by 12% last year, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) anticipates that this 2024 it could contract by 18%, a huge collapse if one considers that the economies of Yemen and Syria are have contracted over the last decade by around 5% annually, on average.

To date, large humanitarian agencies have been able to distribute food to around six million people, according to data from the Food Security and Livelihoods Fund (FSL).

WFP is the backbone of these operations, reaching more than five million people in Sudan and more than 1.2 million in neighboring countries.

Humanitarian agencies have had to navigate a sea of ​​obstacles from both sides since the start of the war, which has made it very difficult to send and deliver aid and prevented them from expanding their operations to the necessary levels.

The general lack of security guarantees, attacks on humanitarian workers, looting, bureaucratic obstacles and repeated interruptions of telephone and internet connections represent a major obstacle.

The UN humanitarian affairs coordinator in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, assured on Tuesday that she has received guarantees from the Sudanese government, aligned with the army, to once again allow aid to enter the country through borders and areas that remain outside the control of the military, an option that until now they had blocked despite affecting regions with some of the highest needs.

The current disruption of maritime traffic in the Red Sea is an additional obstacle to the delivery of humanitarian aid to the country, which was mostly accessed through Port Sudan.

Added to all this is the lack of funds from the international community, which in 2023 only financed 3.5% of the humanitarian response plan designed by the UN.

This means that only one in 10 people in emergency situations due to hunger are in areas of Sudan that can be accessed by humanitarian agencies, and only one in five of those most in need have received help from the WFP.

Mutual help

A local actor that has gained significant prominence since the start of the war is the emergency response units (ERR).

It is a decentralized network of volunteer groups very well rooted in some neighborhoods that emerged from civil society and revolutionary groups that already existed in the country.

These groups have now turned their attention to distributing resources and organizing and delivering services, including community kitchens, in places that international agencies cannot reach.

“In Sudan, support for struggling communities comes primarily from the communities themselves, not from international donors,” says Sudanese researcher Sara Abbas, who has studied ERR.

“The international community talks a lot about empowering communities and localizing humanitarian aid, but continues to view local actors with suspicion, underestimates them and, at best, collaborates with them as subcontractors, not partners.”

A spokesperson for the coordinator of these groups in the State of Khartoum explains that the kitchens began in the first month of the war and little by little they spread.

Food is purchased from local merchants or in markets, and the beneficiaries number in the thousands.

“The kitchens are managed by the beneficiaries themselves,” she details.

Its funds come mainly from the Sudanese diaspora and local entities.

And both military intelligence and the paramilitaries have persecuted and repressed them under the accusation of collaborating with their rival and for their politicized past.

Foreign NGOs, for their part, have been cautious when it comes to channeling funds to them due to their lack of institutionalization, although some have begun to do so

sottovoce,

since their autonomy and implementation, especially in urban environments, make them very effective.

Another key actor in this commitment is the private sector, which, although it has been greatly affected by the war and looting, has maintained a certain activity that is crucial.

In this sense, some experts have recommended devising and channeling aid to farmers and companies that are operational, particularly SMEs, to keep them afloat.

As part of this rethinking of the humanitarian response, the deputy director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Adam Yao, explains that the markets in some of the most isolated areas of the country maintain a certain activity, and recommends directly transferring cash to vulnerable people so they can buy food.

Under that same logic, FAO distributed seeds to one million farmers in agricultural regions of Sudan during the second half of 2023, with the aim of producing enough grain to cover the basic needs of between 13 and 19 million people until December.

“Now there is more willingness to work with [local] structures, simply because there are few alternatives, but it is not enough,” Abbas believes.

“A [paradigm] shift is necessary, because local actors absorb most of the risk and also possess the knowledge on how to increase community resilience.”

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