Famine Confirmed in El Fasher and Kadugli as Sudan Becomes the World's Hungriest Country
The catastrophe engulfing Sudan has reached another grim milestone: famine conditions have been officially confirmed in El Fasher and Kadugli, cities cut off by siege and fighting, as the country cements its status as the hungriest place on earth.
The numbers from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification — the global system for measuring hunger — are almost beyond comprehension. Screening data shows global acute malnutrition rates ranging from 38 to 75 percent in El Fasher, and 29 percent in Kadugli. Conditions are too volatile even to predict outcomes for roughly 841,000 people trapped in the hardest-hit areas, including parts of South Kordofan.
El Fasher's suffering compounds atrocity upon atrocity. The North Darfur city, besieged for months by the Rapid Support Forces, endured a three-day rampage last October in which some 6,000 people were killed — violence that Amnesty International has described as crimes against humanity and 'a stain on the conscience of humanity'. Those who survived the massacres now face starvation.
Nor is the violence confined to Darfur. The UN human rights office documented 15 drone strikes on El Obeid, capital of North Kordofan, in the space of three weeks, killing at least 45 civilians — part of the 'relentless' aerial warfare both sides now wage far from the front lines.
The war has displaced more than 13 million people inside Sudan and driven millions more toward famine, while humanitarian access remains choked by both warring parties. UN agencies report one glimmer: where conflict subsides, hunger eases — proof that this famine is man-made, and that its remedy, an end to the fighting, remains stubbornly out of reach.
