Global food monitor says famine has taken hold in Sudan's Darfur

By Maggie Michael, Lena Masri, Ryan McNeill and Deborah Nelson

CAIRO (Reuters) - The war in Sudan and restrictions on aid deliveries have caused famine in at least one site in North Darfur, and have likely led to famine conditions in other parts of the conflict region, a committee of food security experts said in a report on Thursday.

The finding, linked to an internationally recognised standard known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), is just the third time a famine classification has been made since the system was set up 20 years ago.

It shows how starvation and disease are taking a deadly toll in Sudan, where more than 15 months of war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have created the world's biggest internal displacement crisis and left 25 million people - or half the population - in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

Experts and U.N. officials say a famine classification could trigger a U.N. Security Council resolution empowering agencies to deliver relief across borders to the most needy.

In its report, the Famine Review Committee (FRC) found that famine, confirmed when acute malnutrition and mortality criteria are met, was ongoing in North Darfur's Zamzam camp for Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and likely to persist there at least until October.

Zamzam has a population of 500,000. It is near the city of al-Fashir, home to 1.8 million people and the last significant holdout from the RSF across Darfur. The RSF has been besieging the area and no aid has reached the sprawling camp for months.

The primary causes of famine in Zamzam camp are conflict and severely restricted humanitarian access, the FRC said.

It said it was plausible that similar conditions were affecting other areas in Darfur including the displaced persons camps of Abu Shouk and Al Salam.

In late June, an IPC process led by the Sudanese government found that 14 areas in the country, including parts of El Gezira, Kordofan and Khartoum states, were at risk of famine.

In a statement on Thursday Islamic Relief, a charity, said it saw rising numbers of children needing treatment in clinics across Darfur and other parts of Sudan. "It is not too late for them, but time is running out," it said.

Reuters has reported that some Sudanese have been forced to eat leaves and soil, and that satellite imagery showed cemeteries expanding fast as starvation and disease spread.

A Reuters analysis of satellite images identified 14 burial grounds in Darfur that had expanded rapidly in recent months. One cemetery in Zamzam grew 50% faster in the period between March 28 and May 3 than in the preceding three-and-a-half months. The FRC used the analysis as indirect evidence of increasing mortality.

LEAN SEASON

The FRC finding comes during Sudan's lean season, when food availability is lowest. Experts fear that even when harvest season comes in October, crops will be scarce because war prevented farmers from planting.

Sudan's war erupted in mid-April last year from a power struggle between Sudan's army and the RSF ahead of a planned transition towards civilian rule.

The factions had staged a coup in 2021 that derailed a previous transition following the overthrow of autocrat Omar al-Bashir two years earlier.

During the war, aid workers say international relief has been blocked by the army and looted by the RSF. Both sides deny impeding aid.

In February, the army-backed government prohibited aid deliveries from Chad to Darfur through the Adre border crossing, one of the shortest routes to the hunger-stricken region. Government officials have claimed that the crossing is used by the RSF to move weapons.

The alternative Tine border crossing is currently inaccessible because of heavy rain, according to the U.N. humanitarian agency, OCHA.

The FRC called for a ceasefire and "unhindered access" into Darfur.

'ILL-WISHERS'

Sudan's government has signalled its opposition to any famine declaration.

Al-Harith Idriss, Sudan's envoy at the U.N., said in late June that a famine "dictated from above" could lead "ill-wishers to intervene in Sudan".

The famine review was strongly opposed by the Sudanese government, sources familiar with the matter said. FEWS NET, a U.S.-funded organization and IPC partner that issued its own findings on Thursday, was the first to request activation of a review.

Nicholas Haan, a member of the FRC and cofounder of the IPC, said he hoped the finding would "shake people, the power brokers, to respond as they need to".

"And that means humanitarian access, that means funding at the level that needs to be funded … and it means all due political pressure to end the conflict."

The IPC, which includes U.N. agencies, regional bodies and aid groups, is the main global system for measuring food crises. Its most extreme warning is Phase 5, which has two levels, catastrophe and famine.

Criteria for famine include at least 20% of the population suffering extreme food shortages, 30% of children being acutely malnourished and two people in every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or from malnutrition and disease.

In Zamzam, the FRC said data from Médecins Sans Frontières on acute malnutrition from January 2024 revealed rates exceeding the IPC famine threshold, while the mortality rate reached 1.9 deaths in every 10,000 people per day.

Since the IPC process began, famine has been classified in parts of Somalia in 2011 and in parts of South Sudan in 2017.

(Reporting by Maggie Michael, Deborah Nelson, Lena Masri and Ryan McNeill; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Peter Hirschberg and Giles Elgood)