US warns a famine in Sudan is on pace to be the deadliest in decades as the world looks elsewhere
WASHINGTON — The recently confirmed famine in one of the sprawling camps for people displaced by war in Sudan’s Darfur region is becoming increasingly unmanageable as the fighters of the country block aidand it threatens to be bigger and deadlier than the world’s last major famine 13 years ago, U.S. officials warned Friday.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.N. World Food Program and other independent and government humanitarian organizations intensified calls for a ceasefire and access to aid across Sudan. That’s after international experts at the Famine Review Committee formally confirmed on Thursday that famine has reached at least one of three massive makeshift camps housing 600,000 people displaced by The more than year-long war in Sudanhad grown into a real famine.
Two U.S. officials briefed reporters on their analysis of the crisis Friday after the famine finding, only the third in the Famine Review Committee’s 20-year history. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity as a ground rule for their general briefing.
The last major famine, in Somalia, killed an estimated 100,000 people. a quarter of a million people in 2011half of which are children under 5 years of age.
The blockades imposed by warring parties in Sudan on food and other aid for civilians trapped in the Zamzam camp are “realizing the worst fears of the humanitarian community,” one of the U.S. officials said.
The war in the North African country erupted in April 2023 when two rival generals, both internationally backed, suddenly launched a deadly battle for control of Sudan’s capital, ousting an existing civilian transitional government that Sudanese had hoped would bring stability to the country. On one side, the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, emerged from the Janjaweed militias are notorious for their mass attacks, rapes and forcible displacement of civilians in Darfur in 2003.
While most of the world was focused on conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and the wider Middle East, Sudan’s war quickly became the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The United Nations said last month that 10.7 million people had been displaced by the conflict. Unlike the previous war, much of the country is facing acute hunger.
Aid workers were last able to provide humanitarian aid to civilians trapped in camps in Darfur in April. The RSF has besieged the area and is accused of attacking hospitals, camps and other civilian targets.
World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain urged the international community in a statement after the famine declaration to work toward a ceasefire. “It is the only way to reverse a humanitarian catastrophe that is destabilizing this entire region of Africa,” she said.
USAID Director Samantha Power stressed that the famine is entirely man-made. Both sides, “aided by outside sponsors, are using famine as a weapon of war,” she said in a statement.
U.S. officials on Friday pointed to Washington as the largest source of aid — the little that does get through — for Sudan. They answered questions about why the Biden administration did not use airdrops or other direct U.S. military interventions to bring food to people in Darfur who were in Gaza, saying the terrain in Sudan was different.
The United States and Saudi Arabia have invited both parties to ceasefire talks in Switzerland in August. The RSF leader said he planned to attend, while Sudan’s military-controlled government said any negotiations before the implementation of the Jeddah Declaration “would not be acceptable to the Sudanese people.”
The Jeddah Declaration of Commitment to Protect Civilians, adopted last year, was intended to end the conflict, but neither side has committed to its goals.
International experts use fixed criteria to confirm the existence of famines. Formal declarations of famines are usually made by the countries themselves or the United Nations, and politics often delay such declarations.
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Khaled reported from Cairo.