Famine has already been officially declared in Sudan, and by some estimates, it could claim millions of lives and end up as one of the worst famines in world history. For now, it’s in the early stages, but there are already far too many starving children. When I traveled to the Chad-Sudan border last month, I met one of them with his mom in a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders.
The best way to end the famine would be to resolve the civil war between warring groups in Sudan, but even as fighting continues, all parties must allow humanitarian access so that trucks with food can reach people who desperately need it.
Instead, the warring parties have been inclined to use starvation as a weapon of war. The Sudanese Armed Forces, for example, has obstructed aid to areas controlled by its main rival; a recent, limited period of permitted access largely coincided with the current rainy season, when roads become nearly impassable.
As soon as the World Food Program had permission to provide aid to these areas, it dispatched dozens of trucks carrying enough food for 100,000 people, headed for a hard-hit area called Zamzam — and all the trucks were soon stuck in the mud or forced to turn back. While traveling on these roads, I passed any number of trucks stuck in the mud.
The World Food Program offers vouchers that can be exchanged for lentils and other food from a national retailer. This is saving lives, but a far greater effort will require not only allowing humanitarian access but also more generosity from donor countries. Partly because Sudan’s famine has been overshadowed by the war in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations appeal for Sudan is only half funded.
I’ve been very critical of the Biden administration for looking the other way as its partner, the United Arab Emirates, supplies weapons and other support for the Rapid Support Forces, one of the most brutal armed groups in the civil war. Joe Biden’s silence feels to me as if it is bleeding into complicity. But to its credit, the Biden administration has been quite generous with aid to Sudan. The United States is the largest single donor to the Sudan relief effort, supporting both refugees in neighboring countries and the millions displaced at home.
The Sudan famine may be of an order of magnitude worse than anything aid workers have seen in their careers, perhaps rivaling or exceeding the horrific famine of 1984 in Ethiopia and other countries. Some experts warn that Sudan’s famine may claim more than 10 million lives unless the world shows a much more energetic response — and so far, that is not happening.
Until the world takes notice, displaced families are the people whose lives are at stake.
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Contact Kristof at Facebook.com/Kristof, Twitter.com/NickKristof or by mail at The New York Times, 620 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10018.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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