Sudan Faces Famine Risk as Donors Warn of Worsening Hunger
The United States, the European Union and 30 other countries warned on October 27 of an alarming deterioration in food security in Sudan and called for urgent action to prevent famine. A joint statement released by the US State Department cited a risk of famine in the coming months, based on warnings from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a system used to rate hunger levels around the world. Reuters and Al Jazeera reported on the statement.
The warning comes after more than two and a half years of war between Sudan's army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group. The fighting began on April 15, 2023. Aid workers cited by Al Jazeera say the war has killed as many as 200,000 people. The same report puts the number of people displaced by the war at 13 million, and says the conflict has led to famine in parts of the country.
Hunger has spread alongside the displacement. The war has forced nearly nine million people from their homes inside Sudan, according to the United Nations, and has disrupted farming, trade and access to humanitarian aid. In May, the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization and UNICEF warned that nearly 19.5 million people in Sudan face acute food insecurity, a term for hunger severe enough to threaten life, with a continuing risk of famine. The same agencies said more than 825,000 children in Sudan are at risk of death from severe malnutrition in 2026.
Aid is shrinking just as needs grow. WFP had planned to reach 4.6 million people a month in 2026, but 800,000 people are being cut from its emergency food assistance starting in October. In July, WFP warned that El Obeid, a city in central Sudan, is becoming the new centre of the country's displacement and hunger crisis. The agency said it needed $646 million for June to November 2026 to reach a planned 8.5 million people.
The human toll is visible in individual lives. Aisha Adam, 50, fled her home in the al-Kalakla neighbourhood of Khartoum after the war began. She now lives in a camp for internally displaced people in Port Sudan with her orphaned grandson and her nephew, according to Al Jazeera.
Around 5 million people in Sudan face emergency or catastrophic levels of hunger, according to WFP figures reported by Reuters in July. The International Organization for Migration, a UN agency, has said that about 12 million people in total have been forcibly displaced by the conflict, including more than 6.8 million inside Sudan.
