Is there famine in Sudan?
This month a group of United Nations-backed experts looked at the data and concluded the answer is yes.
But no official declaration of famine has been made.
As it turns out, making such a pronouncement comes with its own set of rules and regulations.
So … what constitutes a famine
Let’s start with a definition.
In the 1980s, a series of devastating famines struck several countries in Africa — including the infamous famine in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s due to drought. Estimates are that some 1 million people died in Ethiopia alone.
The Ethiopian famine inspired the “We are the World” song that raised millions. It also eventually led to an effort to come up with a common definition of what constitutes a famine to help governments and humanitarian groups take the necessary actions. That system of figuring out whether a famine is happening or not is called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
The assessment is made by a team of independent food security experts known as the Famine Review Committee, backed by the United Nations and other international aid agencies,
According to the IPC, the threshold requirements for famine are: 1 in 5 households face an extreme lack of food, malnutrition rates among young children are at 30% and in an affected area 2 out of 10,000 people are dying every day of causes not related to trauma.
In the case of Sudan in 2024, the ongoing civil war has decimated the country’s food supply. The Famine Review Committee looked at data collected from Zamzam camp in North Darfur in Western Sudan, where over half a million people are sheltering.
“In Zamzam camp we had data that confirmed the acute malnutrition threshold for famine had been passed and that the mortality threshold had nearly passed as early as January,” says Lark Walters, a decision support adviser at the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which is part of the Famine Review Committee.
That January data is now nearly 8 months old, Walters says, but it took until August 2 for the famine assessors to analyze and reach a consensus and publicize their findings.
“It is important to recognize that famine can only be confirmed after many deaths occur and mortality rates reach extreme levels, and so government and humanitarian actors should really never wait until a famine is classified to mobilize the resources available to stop it,” Walters cautions. “In this particular case, there has been concern for several months now. We all saw this coming.”
Indeed, aid organizations told NPR that conditions were already catastrophic at the beginning of the year. Since then, violence has escalated, North Darfur is under siege by the RSF paramilitary group engaged in a civil war with the Sudanese armed forces for over 15 months.
Aid groups such as Doctors without Borders as well as the United Nations told NPR that things have reached a breaking point. They have heard from sources on the ground that people are boiling dirt in water as a last resort to ease the hunger pains of children. Eyewitness sources have also told them that people are selling their children to be married with the hope they can use the payment for food — or giving their children to armed groups to serve as soldiers in return for money.
Meanwhile, since April, when the fighting escalated, both sides in the Sudanese civil war have been blocking humanitarian aid. Each side does not want supplies to reach their opponents. And because the country is now in its dry season, people can’t grow their own food.
The government role
The scientists and data analysts who issued their report this month say what needs to come next is political action.
This is where it gets bureaucratic.
If a country has a functioning government, the U.N. asks the government to issue a declaration of famine. It’s a system that is intended to respect the sovereignty of the nation.
There's not a lot of precedent to examine. In the history of this process, there have only been two prior times when famine was in fact declared.
The first time was in 2011 in Somalia. In that case, the U.N. made the declaration alone because the country did not have a functional government.
The second was in 2017 in South Sudan, as declared by the government.
But in 2024, the Sudanese government has repeatedly denied the existence of famine. The country’s U.N. representative stated at the Security Council that they don’t believe the data.
Humanitarian groups are now saying that the U.N. should step in and make a declaration of famine. The U.N. says it’s up to the internationally recognized Sudanese government.
NPR spoke with the head of the U.N. office for humanitarian affairs in Sudan Justin Brady on August 6.
“We’ve requested a meeting with the government," he says. "We're waiting for confirmation on that to discuss with them and to see you know what it will take for them to recognize the conditions that the food security experts have concluded.”
And you might wonder: If the experts are already saying that famine exists, what difference would it make to issue an official declaration of famine.
Aid officials say that an international statement mobilizes humanitarian response. That’s what happened in Somalia in 2011.
In particular, food security experts are calling for convoys of trucks to bring food and nutritional support not only for those who are malnourished but for those who are on the brink. The World Health Organization says 8.5 million people in Sudan are at emergency levels of food insecurity — one category away from famine according to the U.N.-backed definitions.
And there has been progress this week. The Sudanese armed forces agreed to open the Adre border between Chad and Sudan, following talks in Geneva. On Thursday, the World Food Programme said a convoy of more than a dozen trucks delivered grains and other supplies to about 13,000 people in Western Darfur. The WFP said it had more supplies for 500,000 people that are still awaiting permission from Sudanese authorities. Aid groups said this was a good sign but a trickle of what is needed to help the population in Sudan.
“I've seen some estimates of up to 4 million people would die,” said the U.N.’s Justin Brady, referring to calculations made by global groups who predict how many people will die of hunger based on available calories and population size. “So it is going to get quite grim here.”
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