Famine has already gripped five areas across Sudan, according to a report last month by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-backed assessment. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

An estimated 3.2 million children under the age of five are expected to face acute malnutrition this year in war-torn Sudan, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“Of this number, around 7,72,000 children are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition,” Eva Hinds, UNICEF Sudan’s Head of Advocacy and Communication, said late on Thursday (January 9, 2025).

Famine has already gripped five areas across Sudan, according to a report last month by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-backed assessment.

Sudan has endured 20 months of war between the Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killing tens of thousands and, according to the United Nations, uprooting 12 million in the world’s largest displacement crisis.

Confirming that 3.2 million children are currently expected to face acute malnutrition, Ms. Hinds said “the number of severely malnourished children increased from an estimated 7,30,000 in 2024 to over 7,70,000 in 2025.”

The IPC expects famine to expand to five more parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region by May — a vast area that has seen some of the conflict’s worst violence. A further 17 areas in western and central Sudan are also at risk of famine, it said.

“Without immediate, unhindered humanitarian access facilitating a significant scale-up of a multisectoral response, malnutrition is likely to increase in these areas,” Ms. Hinds warned.

Sudan’s Army-aligned government strongly rejected the IPC findings, while aid agencies complain that access is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles and ongoing violence.

In October 2024, experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council accused both sides of using “starvation tactics”.

On Tuesday (January 7, 2025), the United States determined that the RSF had “committed genocide” and imposed sanctions on the paramilitary group’s leader.

Across the country, more than 24.6 million people — around half the population — face “high levels of acute food insecurity,” according to IPC, which said: “Only a ceasefire can reduce the risk of famine spreading further”.

People line up to register for a potential food aid delivery at a camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) in Agari, North Kordofan, on June 17, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

More than half of Sudan’s population is facing high levels of “acute food insecurity”, a situation exacerbated by the country’s devastating war, said a report cited by the United Nations on June 27.

Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The conflict in the northeast African country of 48 million has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Also Read: Sudan’s food crisis and what action is needed | Explained

“Fourteen months into the conflict, Sudan is facing the worst levels of acute food insecurity” that the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, has recorded, the report said.

The crisis would impact “approximately 25.6 million people,” it said, including 755,000 in famine conditions and an additional 8.5 million facing “emergency” situations.

It pointed to “a stark and rapid deterioration of the food security situation” compared with the previous figures published in December, with a 45 percent increase in people facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

“The conflict has not only triggered mass displacement and disruption of supply routes… it has also severely limited access to essential humanitarian assistance, exacerbating an already dire situation,” the IPC said.

It further cited “highly dysfunctional health services, water contamination and poor sanitation and hygiene conditions”.

Starvation as weapon

The IPC report comes a day after United Nations (U.N.) experts accused Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces and Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces of using starvation as a weapon of war.

“Both the SAF and the RSF are using food as a weapon and starving civilians,” said the experts, including the special rapporteur on the right to food.

They also said foreign governments providing military support to both the army and the RSF were “complicit” in war crimes.

Both sides have been accused of attacking activists and aid workers, looting or obstructing aid and targeting infrastructure.

On Thursday, the IPC reported that 14 areas of the country, home to millions of people, were “at risk of famine”, that could take hold between June and September 2024.

The regions – including besieged El-Fasher in North Darfur, parts of the capital Khartoum and key displacement centres in Darfur and South Kordofan – are also those most affected by direct fighting.

Some, including Tuti Island in the centre of Khartoum, have been under an effective siege by both forces for over a year.

Aid agencies and the U.N. have repeatedly warned that the already dire humanitarian crisis could become much worse as the fighting spreads, displacing even more people.

Just this week, thousands were forced to flee the southeastern town of Sennar after an RSF attack on nearby Jebel Moya, eyewitnesses told AFP, raising fears the front line is once again shifting south and east.

Sennar, a key state hosting over half a million displaced people already, connects central Sudan to the army-controlled south and east, where hundreds of thousands more are sheltering.

Stick-thin arms

The IPC report “confirms what humanitarian actors and civilians on the ground already know: famine is at the door”, said Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, head of humanitarian organisation Mercy Corps.

“History has shown that by the time a famine is officially declared, people are already dying at a horrifying pace,” she added.

Aid workers have long warned the difficulty of accessing data has prevented the declaration of an all-out famine, but starvation is already claiming lives across the country.

Even in Port Sudan, the country’s new de facto capital under army control, displacement centres are packed with “infants with stick-thin arms” showing “dangerously high malnutrition levels”, the World Food Programme said Thursday.

According to WFP country director Eddie Rowe, it is still possible “to avert an outright famine”, if agencies are granted “unfettered access” and adequate funding.

By June, the U.N.’s humanitarian response plan for Sudan – totalling $2.7 billion – was only 17.3% funded.