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Yahoo
09-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Starvation spreads from camps to besieged Sudanese city of El-Fasher
Months after famine was declared in nearby displacement camps, the besieged Sudanese city of El-Fasher is now seeing starvation deaths of its own, with no food aid entering and the UN's World Food Programme warning of worsening conditions for the 300,000 people still trapped inside. After nearly 28 months of siege, the UN's children agency Unicef and the World Food Programme (WFP) say famine could soon take hold in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. 'The situation in El Fasher is completely catastrophic; the city's population is on the verge of starvation,' said Leni Kinzli, WFP's spokesperson in Sudan, speaking to RFI this week 'It is besieged, cut off from the rest of the country, and humanitarian access is extremely difficult.' WFP says it has not been able to deliver food to the city for over a year. In the meantime, it has carried out cash transfers, but the blockade has made those nearly useless. 'Since the city is under blockade, the prices of basic necessities have skyrocketed, and people cannot even buy enough to make one meal a day,' Kinzli said. Some residents are reportedly now eating animal feed and rubbish to survive. 'And this is despite the fact that we are ready to intervene with food trucks if we are allowed to pass,' Kinzli added. WFP is again calling for aid convoys to be allowed through. Two years of devastation: Sudan's war claims thousands and displaces millions 'Skin and bones' The Sudanese army, at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023, recaptured Khartoum state in May, but widespread hunger continues to grip the heart of Africa's third-largest country. Many children in Sudan are now 'skin and bones', UN officials said this week, and thousands of families in El-Fasher, more than 1,000 kilometres west of Khartoum, are at risk of starving. 'Everyone in El-Fasher is facing a daily struggle to survive,' said Eric Perdison, WFP's regional director for eastern and southern Africa, on Tuesday. RSF forces have surrounded the city since May. It is the last major urban area in Darfur still under army control. 'People's coping mechanisms have been completely exhausted by over two years of war,' Perdison said in a statement. 'Without immediate and sustained access, lives will be lost.' WFP says food prices in El-Fasher are now 460 percent higher than in the rest of the country. Soup kitchens have shut down, and aid remains blocked. Unicef's Sheldon Yett, who recently visited Sudan, warned of growing malnutrition. 'Malnutrition is rife, and many of the children are reduced to just skin and bones,' he said. Around 25 million people across Sudan face severe food insecurity, according to the UN. UN urges action on Sudan's 'forgotten war' as humanitarian crisis takes hold Acute hunger, limited access Famine was first declared in the surrounding displacement camps last year, especially in Zamzam. The UN said the crisis would likely spread to the city itself by May. Only a lack of reliable data has prevented a formal famine declaration for the wider region. Aid agencies say insecurity is making it nearly impossible to act. In June, five humanitarian workers were killed when their UN convoy to El-Fasher was attacked. 'We have not had access to the horrible situation unfolding in El-Fasher, despite trying for months and months and months,' said Yett. 'We have not been able to get supplies there.' Nearly 40 percent of children under five in the area are acutely malnourished, UN data shows. Residents often shelter in makeshift bunkers to avoid shelling as the RSF continues its push to take full control of Darfur. In April, an RSF attack on Zamzam camp killed hundreds and forced hundreds of thousands to flee to el-Fasher and the nearby town of Tawila. A deadly cholera outbreak is now spreading there. 'Every day the conflict continues in Sudan, innocent lives are lost, communities are torn apart, and trauma continues to haunt generations,' said Radhouane Nouicer, the UN's expert on human rights in Sudan. 'The ongoing war has devastated civilian lives and turned daily survival into a constant struggle.' Children in crisis Relative calm has returned to Khartoum, but children there still have only "limited, but growing access to safe water, food, healthcare and learning", according to Unicef's Yett. In the two hardest-hit areas of Khartoum state, Jebel Awliya and Khartoum proper, "children and families in the neighbourhood are sheltered often in small, damaged or unfinished buildings", he added. "We are on the verge of irreversible damage to an entire generation of children." The war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands across Sudan, displaced millions and left the country's healthcare system in ruins. The UN describes the conflict as the world's largest displacement and hunger crisis. (with newswires)
DW
07-08-2025
- Politics
- DW
A Sudanese city is starving: What can be done to help? – DW – 08/07/2025
The eastern Sudanese city of El Fasher has been under siege for almost a year. Fighters in the country's civil war have blocked all roads, putting around 300,000 inhabitants at risk of famine. Warnings have been coming for months. Last December, the global hunger monitor Integrated Food Security Phase Classification reported famine in two camps near the north-western Sudanese city of El Fasher, home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Even then, they warned Sudan's ongoing civil war could see famine spread into the city by May. The warning was prescient. El Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur, has now been under siege for over a year now. This week, the United Nations and a number of its agencies warned that approximately 300,000 people trapped inside the city face starvation. "WFP [the World Food Program] has not been able to deliver food assistance to El Fasher by road for over a year as all roads leading there are blocked," the UN aid program said in a statement. "The city is cut off from humanitarian access leaving the remaining population with little choice but to fend for survival with whatever limited supplies are left." Many residents are resorting to eating hay or animal fodder. Food that is available in the city costs significantly more than elsewhere in Sudan, making it unaffordable for most people. "What we really need now is for a humanitarian pause to be agreed upon so that we can safely transport urgent food and nutrition supplies into the city," Leni Kinzli, a WFP spokesperson based in Sudan, told DW. Sudan's civil war began in early 2023 when two rival military groups — the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) — started fighting for control. The SAF, with about 200,000 personnel and led by the country's de facto leader Abdel-Fattah Burhan, operates like a regular army. Burhan's government, based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, is recognized as Sudan's government by the UN. The RSF, estimated to have 70,000 to 100,000 fighters and headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti. It functions more like a guerrilla force and includes the infamous Janjaweed militias, notorious for their brutality in Darfur in the early 2000s. Both sides have been accused of war crimes. El Fasher remains the only urban center in the Darfur region not controlled by the RSF. If the RSF wins here, they would control almost all of western Sudan. The SAF-aligned militias inside El Fasher, known as the Joint Forces, prevent a complete RSF victory. This is why the RSF has laid siege to the city since April 2024, digging trenches and regularly launching attacks on it. The situation worsened in April when the RSF attacked two camps near El Fasher sheltering over 500,000 displaced people. Many fled into the city or nearby towns. As the Joint Forces inside El Fasher lose ground, the RSF has tightened the siege in recent moments, said Shayna Lewis, senior adviser on Sudan for the US-based group PAEMA (Preventing and Ending Mass Atrocities). "The Rapid Support Forces have besieged the city for over a year at this point," she told DW in a televised interview. "But it's particularly in the past few months that they've tightened that blockade. Nothing is coming in and out. We used to have donkey carts that carried food into the city but now barely anything is able to even be smuggled in." Locals say the RSF aims to starve out SAF-allied forces. There are also reports that some of the forces inside the city are preventing civilians from leaving, using them as a protective buffer. "They attacked us; it was exhausting," Enaam Mohammed, a Sudanese woman who fled El Fasher for the nearby town of Tawila, told journalists this week. Tawila, around 40 kilometers (25 miles) away, has seen a massive influx of around 400,000 displaced people since April. Diseases like cholera and measles are now spreading there. "[They asked us] 'Where are the weapons? Where are the men?'" Mohammed continued, describing her experience with the RSF. "If they find someone with a mobile phone, they take it. If you have money, they take it. If you have a good, strong donkey, they take it." Mohammed says she also saw the RSF killing people and raping women. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Currently the conflict is at what analysts have described as a "strategic stalemate." Alongside other smaller groups, the RSF controls much of western Sudan, while the SAF controls the east. Earlier in July, the RSF set up their own civilian government, effectively splitting Sudan in two. There is no credible peace process and heavy fighting is ongoing in other parts of Sudan too. "Both parties view the conflict through a zero-sum lens," analysts at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) wrote earlier this year. "The victory of one side is entirely dependent on the defeat of the other." Neither side wants to negotiate, observers say. Exacerbating that is foreign backing for the different fighting groups. In July, the US postponed a meeting about Sudan that would have brought together Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The Saudis and Egyptians are thought to support the SAF and the UAE, the RSF — all deny providing military aid to Sudanese groups. The meeting is now planned for September. This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called SAF leader Burhan to ask for a week-long ceasefire that would allow aid into El Fasher. Burhan agreed but the RSF has yet to consent. The impact of the war also goes well beyond the besieged city of El Fasher, the WFP's Kinzli pointed out. The UN regularly calls what is happening in Sudan the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Aid agencies estimate that around 12 million people of Sudan's 46-million-strong population have been displaced by the conflict and that around 150,000 people have died as a result of it. There are famine conditions and infectious diseases in other parts of the country too. "What we need from the international community is two things," Kinzli said. "One, of course, is funding — because the scale of needs in Sudan is just so high. We're looking at 25 million people who face acute hunger and that's a moderate estimate. The resources we have available are just not able to meet that level of need." The second thing aid agencies like the WFP would like to see is "increased attention and engagement" with Sudan from the international community, she argues. "Primarily to help bring an end to this conflict by bringing all parties to the table, but also to join us in our calls for unfettered humanitarian access," she says. "What needs to happen in Sudan is that the flow of aid needs to be larger than the flow of weapons," Kinzli concluded. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
