Sudan – US officials have warned that the famine caused by the ongoing war in Sudan and the blockade of aid is worsening and could be on track to become the deadliest in more than a decade.
Newsweek magazine said – in a report by Mandy Taheri – that the civil war that has been ongoing for 16 months in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has had devastating humanitarian effects, as it has displaced approximately 10.7 million people internally and killed more than 14,000 people, according to the United Nations.
On August 1, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Famine Review Committee, the main global body that analyses food crises, concluded that there was famine in Zamzam camp in North Darfur, Sudan, the third time the committee has used this classification.
The committee defines famine in any given area when at least 20% of households face severe food shortages, at least 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition, and the daily death rate exceeds two people per 10,000.
Zamzam camp is one of the largest internally displaced persons camps in Sudan, hosting more than half a million internally displaced persons.
Some estimates put their number at 800,000, and “displaced people continue to pour in at a time when floods threaten to contaminate water and sanitation facilities.”
“The main factors behind the famine in Zamzam camp are conflict and lack of humanitarian access,” the committee wrote in its newly published report, as warring factions have prevented food and other humanitarian aid from entering the camp.
Two U.S. officials, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity on Friday after a U.S. briefing on the situation, said the famine could be more deadly than the last major global famine, in Somalia in 2011, which was estimated to have killed 250,000 people, half of them children under the age of five.
“This is a man-made famine, entirely supported by outside sponsors, where starvation is used as a weapon of war, and food and life-saving emergency nutritional supplements are being prevented from reaching those in need,” USAID Administrator Samantha Power said in a statement on Friday.
Power noted that food insecurity in the country extends beyond Zamzam camp, where “more than 90 percent of children screened by humanitarian organizations in Central Darfur – more than 4,000 children in five locations – suffer from some form of acute malnutrition.”
The magazine pointed out that the extent of hunger in the country is enormous, and the United Nations estimates that “about 25.6 million people – more than half of Sudan’s population – are facing severe hunger, including more than 755,000 people on the brink of famine.”
Source: Newsweek
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2024-08-04 17:37:58
