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Sudan is one of the most challenging countries right now for international humanitarian agencies. Any problems that existed before April 2023 have been compounded by the war that began then and which shows no sign of being resolved.
Omer Marouf, program manager for Catholic Relief Services in Sudan, has witnessed a dramatic increase in internally displaced people as well as a shortage of humanitarian assistance.
“It has forced a great number of people to different parts of the country, and this has increased the needs of the people, and we know that the people displaced from their homes go to a safer place, but they go with empty hands, just escaping the conflict,” Marouf told Aleteia.
CRS is the US bishops' agency to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas.
Marouf, who is Sudanese himself, is managing an emergency food program in Central and West Darfur, a partnership with the World Food Program, which is helping to provide emergency food assistance to almost 1 million people.
Darfur is where some of the worst fighting is taking place right now. The Rapid Support Forces, which have been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces since April 15, 2023, is trying to capture the city of El Fasher, apparently burning many villages along the way.
Annus horribilis
The situation in Sudan contributed to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano’s recent front-page article describing 2023 as an annus horribilis (a horrible year) for the number of its armed conflicts. It was the year with the highest number of conflicts since 1946: 59 spread across 34 countries,” with the last three years “the bloodiest in terms of number of victims since the end of the Cold War.”
As escalating violence quickly spread from the capital, Khartoum, to other parts of the country in 2023, more than 6 million people had been forced to flee by the end of the year, with a further 1.2 million fleeing to neighboring countries. The number of Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers increased by at least 826,800 during the year to reach 1.8 million, almost all of whom were hosted by neighboring countries, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan.
“As of May 2024, operational data indicates the number of new displacements since April 2023 has risen to more than 7.1 million within the country, with a further 1.9 million people arriving in neighboring countries,” the UNHCR, the United Nations agency for refugees, reported.
The agency also said that hunger is widespread, with more than 20 million people (42% of the entire population) facing acute food insecurity, especially in conflict areas that are hard to reach.
The conflict is hindering the movement of food from different parts of the country, CRS' Marouf said. “For instance, it's difficult to move food from Port Sudan [where he is based] to Central Darfur and West Darfur, while the conflict is active, on the roads. There are also challenges in moving food from the borders and from the neighboring countries like Chad to Sudan, for instance.”
He said that West and Central Darfur have been waiting for food shipments since January, “and the needs are escalating dramatically as a result of the conflict.”
Famine on horizon?
Contributing to the problem is the fact that last year’s harvest was very poor, in large part because the conflict prevented many people from farming.
“People try to move to the states where conflict is not that active, and then that also adds pressure on the limited services and increases the number of people in need in that particular area,” Marouf said. “This is the second year that there are no signs of having a promising local production [harvest] as well,” he added.
In fact, international agencies have been warning of the very real possibility that Sudan could begin experiencing a famine.
“Time is running out to save lives and the lean season looms,” a report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization recently warned. “The outlook for food production is bleak, and there is a rapidly shrinking window to support farmers before the main planting season ends and the rains begin, limiting access to the hardest-hit communities.”
The report said that 18 million people are “acutely food insecure, including 3.6 million children acutely malnourished, and famine is rapidly closing in on millions of people in Darfur, Kordofan, Al Jazirah and Khartoum.”
