March 6, 2024 (EIRNS)—World Food Program executive director Cindy McCain warned that the 11-month war “risks triggering the world’s largest hunger crisis.”
For the last 11 months Sudan has been a war zone because of the fighting between the National Sovereignty Counsel led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and a rebellion led by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The conflict has killed tens of thousands, displaced 8 million people, destroyed infrastructure and crippled Sudan’s economy.
Now, “millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake,” McCain said, reports Egyptian daily Al Ahram.
“Twenty years ago, Darfur was the world’s largest hunger crisis and the world rallied to respond,” she said, referring to the western region of Sudan. “But today, the people of Sudan have been forgotten.”
The WFP is currently unable to access 90% of those facing “emergency levels of hunger,” and says only five percent of Sudan’s population “can afford a square meal a day.”
One in five children crossing the border was malnourished, it added, while 18 million people are facing acute food security, 5 million of whom are at catastrophic levels of hunger—the highest emergency classification short of famine.
