Sudan faces what the World Food Program has called “the humanitarian crisis of our time” as tens of millions of people struggle with sieges, blockades and aid shortages that have left entire cities starving.
What began as a power struggle between rival generals more than two years ago has since plunged Sudan into a brutal civil war that has left more than 150,000 people dead and millions of displaced people from their homes, with the departure of massacres bloody sand visible from space and destroyed infrastructure.
Sudan “represents the largest humanitarian crisis in the world today,” Leni Kinzley, WFP communications specialist in Sudan, told NBC News on Sunday. “This can no longer be forgotten or ignored simply because the severity and magnitude has not really been seen at this level.”
According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an internationally recognized framework for measuring hunger and food insecurity, at least 21.2 million people – approximately 45% of Sudan's population – currently face severe food insecurity. Famine conditions were confirmed in Darfur's El Fasher and Kadugli, where “people lived for months without reliable access to food and health care,” the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said.
Kinzley described a situation in which even relatively calm areas remain unstable while other regions fall deeper into famine. She said WFP can provide food support to 4 to 5 million people every month and has the capacity to assist 8 million people, but “the resources we have do not meet the needs.”
Aid delivery remains extremely challenging in violence-plagued areas, where conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to shape the crisis.
This includes El Fasher, which was under siege by the RSF for more than 18 months, during which “absolutely no” humanitarian aid could get there, Kinzley added. The RSF eventually defeated the Sudanese army. last major stronghold in Darfur in October.
Sudanese paramilitary drone attack in Southern Kordofan Thursday to kindergartenA local doctors' group said 50 people were killed, including 33 children.
United Nations aid teams in Sudan have published joint statement on Thursday warned that the violence was “restricting access to food, medicine and basic necessities, and limiting farmers' access to their fields and markets, increasing the risk of famine spreading across Kordofan states.”
UN Human rights chief Volker Türk warned: “We must not allow Kordofan to become another El Fasher. It is truly shocking that history is repeating itself in Kordofan so soon after the terrible events in El Fasher.”
But conditions on the ground are already grim.
“We are seeing almost the same thing in South Kordofan state,” said Dr. Mohamed Elsheikh, a spokesman for the Sudan Doctors Network. RSF “is doing the same blockade, the same blockade, they're not allowing food and medicine to get into the cities,” he told NBC News, adding that 23 children died from severe malnutrition between Sept. 20 and Oct. 20 this year.
According to Elsheikh, over the past three months, Sudan's civilian population has been subjected to RSF attacks, including large-scale atrocities and human rights violations, with civilians subjected to arbitrary executions and key infrastructure such as hospitals, clinics, schools and homes deliberately targeted by airstrikes.
The Sudan Doctors Network has 19 cases of rape documented carried out by the RSF against women who fled the fighting in El Fasher and arrived at the Al Afad camp in Ad Dabba, Elsheikh said.
Fighting in Sudan began in April 2023 when the Sudanese military, led by the country's top commander and de facto ruler, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, clashed with his former deputy, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, a former camel trader popularly known as Hemedti, who heads the RSF.
Both men previously led counterinsurgency operations against uprisings in the region, a conflict that in 2005 contributed 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 overthrew al-Bashir in 2019 after widespread popular unrest. Two years later, they agreed to share power following a coup that overthrew the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
However, their alliance fell apart over how to manage the transition to civilian government. With neither willing to cede power, full-scale fighting broke out, plunging Sudan into deeper conflict and a humanitarian crisis.
With no solution in sight, the war is becoming more entrenched and chaotic, Hager Ali, a researcher at the German Institute for Global and Regional Studies, told NBC News. What began as a two-way struggle has turned into a tangle of local battles, she said, reopening old regional grievances and eroding any central authority that once existed.
Both sides have gone “from trying to win this war to trying not to lose,” she added, noting that as fighting becomes regional, it leads to “smaller fronts, smaller conflicts, which complicates the chain of command,” making it nearly impossible to maintain even a negotiated ceasefire.
According to the UN Human Rights Council, nearly 13 million people have been forced to flee their homes in search of safety and have been internally displaced or living in neighboring countries such as Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.
Funding for the regional response is less than 10% of what is needed, making it impossible to meet basic needs, he said.
But where funding is available and fighting has subsided, some areas are showing signs of recovery.
Kinzley said 10 areas were confirmed to be affected by famine last year, but “there are only two left now.” About 3.4 million people who were previously at the “crisis” level are no longer classified as such, reflecting limited stabilization in parts of Khartoum, Al Jazeera and Sennar, where some families have begun to return.
While these gains remain narrow and uneven, and the situation remains dire, “it shows that when we have access and funding, we can reverse hunger and improve the situation,” Kinzley added. “The humanitarian response can really make a difference if and when we can get it done.”
