THE civil war in Sudan has pushed a camp housing about 500,000 displaced people near the besieged Darfur city of el-Fasher into famine, an independent group of food security experts says.
The 16-month conflict and restrictions on aid deliveries were to blame, the Famine Review Committee (FRC) concluded after looking at new data.
“The scale of devastation brought by the escalating violence in el-Fasher is profound and harrowing,” it said, explaining how Zamzam camp’s population had ballooned since April.
The war – a power struggle between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis forcing 10 million people from their homes.
It comes as US-mediated talks, scheduled to begin in two weeks, appear to be in jeopardy.
The RSF has accepted the invitation to Geneva, but it is unclear whether the army will go following Wednesday’s alleged assassination attempt on military leader Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
“The main drivers of famine in Zamzam camp are conflict and lack of humanitarian access, both of which can immediately be rectified with the necessary political will,” the FRC said.
The committee, linked to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a global initiative by UN agencies, aid groups and governments which identifies famine conditions – analysed two reports:
The IPC’s Sudan working group’s latest assessment, which says 25.6 million people, or 54% of the population, are in high levels of acute food insecurity with 14 areas at risk of famine and Data published on Thursday from a US agency, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net).
Fews Net said it was possible that famine was also ongoing in Abu Shouk and Al Salam camps, also near el-Fasher, but there was not enough evidence to conclusively say so.
The conditions for classifying an area to be in famine are that at least 20% of households must be facing an extreme lack of food, with 30% of children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or from malnutrition and disease.
