Confirmation of famine in Sudan’s North Darfur state is a sobering reminder of the international community’s responsibility to deliver life-saving aid immediately, the acting UN relief chief said on Friday.
Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Joyce Msuya, the UN humanitarian coordinator, said immediately opening aid access is vital to delivering relief.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which Msuya heads, said the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) reported on Thursday the conflict in Sudan pushed communities in North Darfur State into famine, notably in the Zamzam camp near the state capital El Fasher.
“The United Nations and its partners in Sudan take note of these findings, which reflect the gravity of the humanitarian situation on the ground,” said Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan. “The people of Sudan have suffered relentlessly since conflict broke out more than 15 months ago.”
She said the famine is an artificial crisis that can be resolved if all parties and stakeholders uphold their responsibilities and commitments to the populations in desperate need.
“The humanitarian community in Sudan has been ringing the alarm about the unfolding hunger catastrophe and the risk of famine while conflict has raged on, causing displacement, disrupting basic services, destroying livelihoods, and severely restricting humanitarian access,” the coordinator said.
OCHA said more than 10 million people have been displaced from their homes.
Nkweta-Salami called for a silencing of the guns to enable safe and unimpeded humanitarian access across borders and battle lines and an urgent injection of funding for aid operations.
OCHA said more than half of Sudan’s population — 25.6 million people — is facing acute hunger.
The office said this year’s $2.7bn Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan has been less than a third funded, with only $872m received.
The IPC defines famine as an extreme deprivation of food that causes starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition. It is the primary mechanism the international community uses to analyze data and determine whether famine is happening or projected to occur in a country.
The IPC said analyses are based on evidence from various partners and a multistakeholder technical consensus.
