Sudanese warns of unprecedented famine, humanitarian needs

Sudanese aid worker Shakir Elhassan and his family were among millions forced to flee their homes and former lives after war broke out last year in Sudan.

Some 10 months later, he is one of many voices in the sector warning of a devastating humanitarian crisis that could soon spiral into famine.

"The needs are unprecedented," the communications manager at Care International said, deploring a lack of global attention.

Conflict broke out in April last year between Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, his former deputy and commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Elhassan fled the capital Khartoum in July, joining his wife and three children who had already sought refuge 180 kilometres (110 miles) further south in the town of Wad Madani.

But in December the RSF attacked the town in Jazirah state, which had become a "humanitarian hub" for the region.

"It was horrific, I moved out from Jazirah just with the clothes" on my back, he said."On the road, there were thousands of people moving on foot, in a state of panic. Most of them were women and children."

He and his family found shelter some 400 km east of there, in the provincial capital of Kassala state near the Eritrean border, where they still live and he says he sees a constant trickle of new arrivals.

'Thousands dead, millions displaced in Sudan'

The war in Sudan has killed thousands, including 10,000 to 15,000 people in the single town of El Geneina in the western region of Darfur, according to UN figures.

It has displaced more than six million people inside the country, while more than a million have fled abroad, mostly to neighbouring Chad and Egypt.

The United Nations says outbreaks of diseases pose a growing threat, particularly in overcrowded shelter sites, with the country already facing outbreaks of cholera and dengue fever.

Inside the country, some 25 million people — more than half the population — need humanitarian aid. Of those, 18 million face crisis or worse levels of hunger.

William Carter, country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, visited Darfur in recent weeks.

"Aside from the trauma and the physical loss, what struck me is the level of hunger," he said. "People have sold everything. Bakeries are not producing even half of what they do usually because they have no flour nor wheat."

'Caught in the crossfire'

In early February, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that one child was dying every two hours in the Zamzam camp for displaced people in North Darfur.

That amounted to around 13 child fatalities a day, it said, with many other malnourished children at risk.

Clementine Nkweta-Salami, UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, in November, warned that human rights violations in Darfur were "verging on pure evil", describing children "caught in the crossfire" and girls raped in front of their mothers.

Deepmala Mahla, the humanitarian head for Care International, said the country was "at risk of losing a whole generation"."A lot of children are this close to dying because of starvation," she said.

Alice Verrier, from French charity Premiere Urgence Internationale, said that so far there had been far less humanitarian aid sent to the African country than to Ukraine after Russia invaded in 2022.

"When you look at the sums of money set aside for Ukraine, we're not at all on the same scale," she said. "The Sudanese crisis has been completely forgotten."