After 15 months of fighting in Sudan, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared famine for parts of the country in July 2024.

According to the IPC’s latest analysis, famine is at risk of developing in 17 more areas between February and May 2025, when the lean season—when food is typically hardest for populations to access—begins.

The United States’ recent declaration of genocide in Sudan could raise awareness of the tragedies resulting from the conflict. The United Arab Emirates—which has helped sustain the bloodshed—could also question whether it wishes to bear the reputational costs of association with a genocidal actor. However, the move by the United States, previously the largest humanitarian aid donor to Sudan, to issue stop-work orders for aid could have disastrous consequences for civilians.

Only action to end the conflict and restore and increase humanitarian aid funding with adequate security support for aid delivery will stymie this widening crisis.

Sudan’s Food Systems Under Attack

Signs of the potential for the conflict to break the essential systems delivering food, aid, and health care to the Sudanese people were evident in the first days of violence.

The day after hostilities between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted in April 2023, the World Food Program was forced to suspend aid activities after three of its aid workers were killed. The following day, two hospitals in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, were forced to temporarily close because of damage sustained from the bombing. A week later, one of the country’s largest bread and flour factories was burned down by shelling. It is a failure to stop a relentless continuation of incidents such as these that have brought famine to Sudan.

It is a failure to stop a relentless continuation of incidents such as these that have brought famine to Sudan

The food production, processing, and distribution system has been frequently disrupted and, in parts of the country, destroyed. Before the current conflict, Gezira state produced half of all wheat in Sudan and hosted one of the world’s largest irrigation projects. After taking control of Wad Medani, Gezira’s capital, in December 2023, the RSF pillaged food and agricultural equipment, occupied food factories, and burned crops. Meanwhile, the SAF struck markets in Wad Medani with air-delivered explosives as it sought to repel the RSF.

Gezira state is the center of the country’s food production, but the events in Wad Medani are not unique. Markets across Sudan supplying essential items—including food and resources necessary for food production and processing—have repeatedly become sites of violence. According to Insecurity Insight, an organization that monitors conflict zones, markets in Sudan have been struck by explosive weapons more than 100 times since fighting began in April 2023, the majority of incidents being reported from Khartoum state. Among those incidents attributed to both the SAF and RSF, single markets have been affected on multiple occasions and dozens of civilians have been reported killed. The RSF has also torched and pillaged markets in Darfur, the region where its predecessor—the Janjaweed militias—was accused of genocide in 2003.

The impact on Sudan’s food supply chain has been extreme. Food production has declined dramatically as battered markets face even more difficulty sourcing necessary supplies such as seeds, oil, and fuel, and fighting has created challenges for safely planting and harvesting crops. For the food produced, the destruction of factories and insecurity along main transport routes have undermined processing and distribution. Meanwhile, civilians who may have experienced violence at markets or the killings of friends or family members are likely to have lost confidence that they can buy food and other essential items in safety.

Barriers to Humanitarian Aid

When the food systems of societies fail to supply or make nutritious food accessible to their populations, the humanitarian aid system is designed to step in and address the deficits. In Sudan, however, conflict parties have prevented the aid system from functioning and funding remains inadequate.

The SAF publicly declared in February 2024 that humanitarian aid would not be permitted to enter areas controlled by the RSF. Later that month, the group closed a key aid crossing from Chad into a part of Darfur where it had gained control. The RSF similarly denied access to areas under SAF control, notably by besieging El Fasher in North Darfur, where famine conditions were first declared in July 2024 in the nearby Zamzam refugee camp.

Conflict parties’ failure to safeguard aid has led international aid agencies to suspend their activities, which have subsequently ended the employment of large numbers of local Sudanese staff. This has shifted the burden to Sudanese volunteers and local organizations such as community kitchens and emergency response rooms. These are often less well resourced than large international aid agencies. The majority of their staff and volunteers have limited security risk management training and lack the Western passports needed to evacuate when violence becomes too dangerous. Among the 67 killings of aid workers in Sudan documented by Insecurity Insight since mid-April 2023, 20 were volunteers and all were local staff in incidents for which this information was available.

Local aid organizations and volunteers have provided a lifeline to many Sudanese. However, they remain acutely vulnerable as a result of their work, symbolic of a humanitarian system that has been pushed into a deeply uncomfortable place.

A Shattered Health System

In regions facing severe food insecurity, health systems function as another layer of life support, preventing individuals from succumbing to the worst effects of diseases when their bodies and immune systems are weakened. Conflict parties have relentlessly attacked Sudan’s health system as well.

At least 519 incidents of violence against or obstruction of access to health care have been reported in Sudan since April 2023, according to Insecurity Insight. These include 128 incidents in which health facilities were damaged. Some of these occurred among Sudan’s most food insecure populations, such as El Fasher, where hospitals have been forced to suspend activities after being attacked. In late July 2024, the World Health Organization stated that fewer than 25% of health-care facilities remained functional in the Sudanese states most heavily affected by conflict; only 45% of health facilities were fully functional in other states.

Famine and its associated pain are the outcomes of the SAF and RSF assaults on their country’s life support systems. Experts suggest that hundreds of thousands could perish. It is not merely a lack of food that has driven this situation; it is equally a failure of belligerents to allow civilians to safely access available food, humanitarian aid, and health care. It is the breakdown of these two systems, creating vicious cycles of disease and starvation, that is killing Sudanese civilians.

The last time Sudan’s people experienced comparable challenges was the 1984–85 famine that killed 240,000 people. Unlike the current situation, the famine 40 years ago was caused by drought and economic disarray. One feature common to both is denial of the crises’ existence by Sudan’s military rulers. It did not help then, and it will not help now.

Until the violence ends, all belligerents should uphold their commitments and obligations under international humanitarian law: protect civilians and civilian infrastructure and allow humanitarian access. Meanwhile, the international community should do all it can do to provide aid and facilitate humanitarian access and aid delivery through international and local systems. Only after conflict parties end the violence and the international community restores and increases humanitarian aid can Sudan’s prospects improve.

Women from community kitchens distribute meals to those who are affected by conflict and extreme hunger and out of reach of international aid efforts, in Omdurman, Sudan, on July 27, 2024. REUTERS/Mazin Alrasheed

Newsletter

Think Global Health

Christina Wille

Food

Sudan's Genocide Deepens Famine

Food