CAIRO — A dish of grilled locusts with tree leaves has become the main meal for Sudanese displaced people in Darfur camps, with food scarcity and rarity in most areas of Sudan, after the two parties to the conflict resorted to the weapon of hunger in the war that has been going on since April 2023.
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The raging war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has caused the largest humanitarian disaster in the world, with nearly half the country’s population entering a worsening food shortage crisis.
The use of hunger in war is not new. Controlling, preventing and allowing access to food and drink has been and continues to be a weapon used in wars and conflicts to serve political and military goals, especially because of it is inexpensive and easy to implement.
After more than 20 months of fighting across Sudan, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative has placed some 24.6 million people (almost half of Sudan’s population) in the Crisis phase due to food insecurity. Famine was detected in five areas, including in Sudan’s largest displacement camp, Zamzam, in North Darfur province, IPC said in a report.
While the world turns a blind eye to the violations committed against children and women in Sudan, medical facilities in South Darfur reported that between 4 and 5 children die every day from causes related to malnutrition, and maternal mortality rates increased by 56% in Nyala and Kass, South Darfur, from January to mid-August 2024.
Long-used tool
According to the previous figures, the word famine should not be associated with Sudan in one sentence, but wars and armed conflicts have led to this repeated association. The large African country has previously witnessed numerous famines. That includes the famine that occurred as a result of the conflict that extended from 1986 to 1988, when the war broke out due to the economic crises and policies adopted by Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiry, which resulted in the establishment of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement led by John Garang.
At that time, the Sudanese government and its loyal militias of nomadic Arabs, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, adopted strategies that deprived many civilians of access to food, killing 250,000 Sudanese and displacing 1 million people.
In all these conflicts, the warring parties resorted to starving the Sudanese.
With the renewal of the conflict in August 1991, the famine worsened in a rural area that includes three towns: Kongor, Wau and Ayod, and about 1.5 million people became in dire need of food aid. The tragedy was repeated in 1998 after the conflict flared up again in the Bahr el Ghazal region, southern Sudan, between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Sudanese Armed Forces with their supporting militias (the Janjaweed), and a new famine occurred, affecting 2.6 million people in areas controlled by both parties.
In all these conflicts, the warring parties resorted to starving the Sudanese by besieging cities, cutting off supply routes, stealing livestock and burning villages. Thousands of famine victims fled from hunger and terror and migrated from their original areas.
Worldcrunch Extra!
Know more • Sudan’s 20-month war has killed more than than 24,000 people and driven more than 14 million people — about 30% of the population — from their homes, according to the United Nations. An estimated 3.2 million Sudanese have crossed into neighboring countries including Chad, Egypt and South Sudan. But while the current humanitarian crisis in Sudan is seen as one of the worst in the world, it has little global attention — particularly compared to the Ukraine-Russia War and the Israel-Hamas War. “The whole country has been dislocated. And yet, despite that, the country and the crisis is forgotten,” UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Ted Chaiban said in October 2024. Rights groups have repeatedly urged international powers to pressure Sudan’s military and RSF to stop fighting and negotiate a peaceful settlement to the conflict. The United States and Saudi Arabia have led multiple rounds of talks between the military and the RSF, most recently in August last year. But all failed to establish a ceasefire. — Elias Kassem (read more about the Worldcrunch method here)
Factors leading to famine
Researchers Duval and Bridget Conley identified four key features of famine that are consistent with the practices of both the armed forces and the RSF.
First, the denial of access to food not only disrupts work, trade and food-seeking activities, but also harms public health with difficulty accessing clean water, forcing people to congregate in unsanitary conditions, destroying sanitation facilities and deteriorating housing and shelter. Several reports have indicated that the RSF has looted medical supplies in hospitals and warehouses, fired mortar shells, and forced medical teams to provide healthcare for RSF wounded fighters.
This has led to a collapse in the health situation, especially with the spread of epidemic diseases, as it is estimated that 3.4 million children under the age of five are at risk of cholera, malaria and measles.
Second, access to food is not only denied, but is accompanied by a range of abuses including direct violence, sexual violence, displacement and the destruction of livelihoods and infrastructure. This is what happened during the protracted war in Sudan, where Human Rights Watch documented a number of crimes committed by the support forces, including widespread sexual violence in areas under their control, as well as the unlawful detention of civilians.
The process of starving individuals and populations usually takes a long time.
Third, starvation intersects with other causes of food deprivation, some of which are beyond the control of society, such as environmental pressures and natural disasters. In June 2024, for example, about 491,000 people were affected by the heavy rains that fell in Sudan.
External factors include economic disparities and policies that cause economic distress, either intentionally or by mistake. One of the causes of the economic crisis in Sudan is the control of the army and the RSF militias over the economy, and the competition between the two parties over commercial interests across the mining, agriculture and industry sectors.
Fourth, the process of starving individuals and populations usually takes a long time, sometimes years, to culminate in the declaration of famine. But in Sudan, after a short time of no more than 14 months, the Federal Emergency Response Council declared famine in Zamzam camp in North Darfur State.
Diverting aid
The Sudanese Armed Forces exploited the United Nations’ treatment of it as the legitimate authority in the country and directed aid to areas it controlled in eastern and northern Sudan and prevented aid from reaching areas under control of the RSF, most of which suffer from severe food insecurity, such as the Darfur region in western Sudan.
As a result, the World Food Program was only able to deliver aid to 10% of those facing severe acute hunger across Sudan.
These kitchens and other initiatives were not spared from attacks.
In an attempt to save people’s lives, after Sudanese and international institutions failed to feed the hungry, emergency rooms formed by local volunteers established community kitchens known as “good kitchens.” Yet these kitchens and other initiatives were not spared from attacks by both sides of the conflict. Soldiers stole and looted them, assaulted and arrested volunteers, which caused the kitchens to stop providing food.
The escalating use of starvation as a weapon in Sudan’s raging war portends a famine of historic proportions the Arab country has never seen before. Of course, we do not know the names of those who died of starvation in previous conflicts or in the current war, but those we do know are the ones who committed these crimes.
