NEWS- The United Nations’ World Food Program warned that Sudan’s nearly 11-month war between the National Army Chief Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former Deputy, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Daglo who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), risks triggering the world’s largest hunger crisis since it has killed thousands of people, destroyed infrastructure and crippled Sudan’s economy.
According to the UN, the Sudan conflict has also uprooted more than 8 million people from their homes, in addition to 2 million who had already been forced from their homes before the current conflict started in April last year, making it the world’s largest displacement crisis.
The World Food Programme Executive Director Ms Cindy McCain said millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake, because 20 years ago, Darfur was the world’s largest hunger crisis and the world hurriedly rallied to respond, but today, the people of Sudan have been forgotten.
The Rapid Support Forces who themselves descended from the Janjaweed militia, which was used by former dictator Omar al-Bashir against ethnic minority rebels in Darfur in the early 2000s, has become a thorn in the region.
In the current war, both the Rapid Support Forces and the National Army have been accused of indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, targeting civilians and obstructing and commandeering distribution of the essential aid and the World Food Programme is currently unable to access 90% of those facing “emergency levels of hunger” and says only 5 percent of Sudan’s population can afford a square meal a day.
The U.N. has since said that in the crowded transit camps in South Sudan, where 600,000 people from Sudan have fled, families arrive hungry and are met with more hunger, because of the shortage food supply and one in five children crossing the border is malnourished.
It is reported that inside Sudan, 18 million people are facing acute food security and 5 million people are at catastrophic levels of hunger which is the highest emergency classification short of famine.
Ms McCain said that there is need to address this alarming situation to avert possible causes of death among the people in need of food both inside Sudan and elsewhere across borders where they have fled.
Additional Reporting by Associated Press.
