CAIRO (AP) — The U.N. World Food Program has delivered life-saving food and nutrition supplies to some families across Sudan’s violence-hit western state, bringing a slight increase in vital aid in South Darfur, the organization said, but humanitarian groups say more is needed.
More than 50,000 people living in hunger-hit areas of South Darfur are receiving much-needed food assistance in collaboration with relief agency World Vision, the WFP mission in Sudan said on Tuesday.
WFP did not say when the aid was distributed or how it was delivered, and several spokespeople for the organization did not immediately respond to requests for additional information.
Famine is looming in parts of Sudan, which has been engulfed in violence since April last year, when rising tensions between the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Aid Forces led to heavy fighting across the country.
“The number of hungry people in South Darfur is huge and there is a huge lack of resources,” Jonas Meseret, deputy director for Sudan at the French humanitarian group Action Against Hunger, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Citing a presentation at the Food Security and Livelihoods Cluster Coordination Meeting on June 13, Mesele said only 26 percent of the estimated $581.2 million needed to meet Sudan’s humanitarian needs has been secured.
According to the U.N. migration agency, fighting in Sudan has forced more than 4.6 million people to flee, including over 3.6 million internally displaced and over 1 million who have fled to neighboring countries.
Violence in Sudan has quickly spread to the Darfur region in the west of the country, which has seen some of the bloodiest attacks since the conflict began, and a recent report by a Dutch think tank warned that residents of South Darfur are soon at risk of starving to death.
A report released last month by the Clingendael Institute said some 2.5 million people in Sudan could die from hunger by the end of September 2024, with around 15 percent of the population in Darfur and Kordofan being the worst affected.
“Time is running out to avoid a rapid worsening of the conflict-induced food insecurity crisis,” Samy Gesabi, Sudan director for Action to Eradicate Hunger, told The Associated Press. “The international community and parties to the conflict must act immediately to alleviate hunger and prevent a devastating malnutrition emergency.”
In May, the WFP said in a report that at least 1.7 million people were already suffering from emergency levels of hunger in Darfur, including in Al-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, which is under siege by the RSF.
Civilians in Darfur face “catastrophic levels of hunger”, but food aid deliveries are “intermittent” because of fighting and endless bureaucratic bottlenecks, the WFP said.
The United Nations announced in April that it had begun food distribution in Darfur for the first time in months.
