The specter of hunger hangs over Sudan. After three and a half months of war, “more than 20.3 million people, more than 42% of the population of the country”, one of the poorest in the world, face “acute food insecurity”, a announced the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in a press release. Nearly 930,000 people have fled abroad while 3 million have been displaced within the country, according to a latest report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
For the FAO, the displacements caused by the war, opposing the Sudanese army led by General Abdel Fattah Al-Bourhane to the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, contribute to aggravate food insecurity. The fighting has destroyed infrastructure and weakened the agricultural sector, whereas before the war one in three Sudanese was already suffering from hunger. Today, more than half of Sudanese need humanitarian aid to survive. NGOs and the UN say they are denied access to the country.
Sultriness
According to the FAO, “6.3 million Sudanese are already in an emergency situation (phase 4) of the UN food security classification while the highest phase 5 corresponds to the situation of famine”. .
In West Darfur, where the violence is most intense and civilians are targeted for their ethnicity, “more than half the population is suffering from acute hunger”, according to the UN agency. In the capital, Khartoum, fighting continues to punctuate the daily lives of several million inhabitants locked in their homes, subjected to severe shortages of water, food and electricity in stifling heat. On Wednesday, an army spokesman claimed on television that airstrikes had “killed and injured dozens of rebels” in the south of the capital.
In 2021, the two generals had together ousted the civilians with whom they had shared power since the fall in 2019 of the Islamist dictatorship of Omar Al-Bashir. But disagreements have arisen over the integration of paramilitaries into the army. Since the outbreak of the conflict, General Daglo accuses the army of having wanted to hasten the return of members of the now banned party of the National Congress of Omar Al-Bashir.
The paramilitary group on Wednesday again accused the army of “conspiring” with the former regime. The army “covers up” the activities of National Congress officials, some of whom escaped from prison in the first weeks of the conflict to “regain power”, denounce the FSR.
