UN estimates indicate that about 8 million Sudanese have been displaced from their homes internally and externally (Al Jazeera)
The United Nations World Food Program said that most Sudanese suffer from hunger, and that the percentage of those who can afford a full meal daily does not exceed 5% of the population.
The Regional Director of the World Food Program in East Africa, Michael Dunford, explained that there is a major dilemma regarding access to the data necessary to confirm whether hunger rates in Sudan have reached the levels required to declare famine in this country, which has been torn by war for 10 months.
Dunford said that the World Food Program can only reach about 10% of Sudanese in need of aid, as "there are large areas of the country that we simply cannot reach."
In turn, Director of the World Food Program in Sudan, Eddie Roy, said - yesterday, Wednesday - during statements he made to journalists in Brussels about the humanitarian situation in Sudan, “At this stage, less than 5% of Sudanese can afford a full meal a day.”
He explained that thousands of small and large farms had been abandoned by their owners due to people fleeing the fighting, and he expected the crisis to worsen in the coming months. He said that Sudan is “a country on the verge of collapse.”
The United Nations said that more than half of the Sudanese population - more than 48 million people - are in need of assistance, including 18 million people facing acute food insecurity.
She pointed out that nearly 5 million Sudanese are on the brink of disaster due to food shortages, which is the second worst classification adopted by the World Food Program for emergencies after famine.
Human rights organizations have been warning - for months - that the specter of famine looms on the horizon in Sudan as a result of obstructing the arrival of humanitarian aid and a severe lack of funding.
But the same obstacles that hinder the delivery of aid hinder the ability to determine the extent of the disaster.
The United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced last Sunday that the number of people displaced from their homes inside and outside Sudan has exceeded 8 million people since the outbreak of fighting between the army and the Rapid Support in mid-April 2023.
The war that broke out between the Sudanese army, led by the head of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), resulted in the deaths of more than 13,000 people, according to United Nations estimates.
Source: Al Jazeera + agencies