Sudan civil war: UN-backed report says famine spread to 5 areas but govt calls it 'speculative'

The Sudanese government strongly rejected on Sunday a report backed by the United Nations which determined that famine had spread to five areas of the war-torn country.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) review, which UN agencies use, follows repeated warnings from the United Nations, other aid groups and the United States about the hunger situation in the northeast African country.

IPC said last week that the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had created famine conditions for 638,000 people, with a further 8.1 million on the brink of mass starvation.

The army-aligned government “categorically rejects the IPC’s description of the situation in Sudan as a famine”, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The statement called the report “essentially speculative” and accused the IPC of procedural and transparency failings.

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It said the team did not have access to updated field data and had not consulted with the government’s technical team on the final version before publication.

The IPC did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment. On its website, IPC says its process is “evidence-based” and ensures “a rigorous, neutral analysis.”

On August 1, the IPC had already declared a famine at Zamzam camp for displaced people near El-Fasher, a city in Sudan’s western Darfur region besieged by the RSF.

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At a press conference in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, the government’s commissioner for humanitarian aid, Salwa Adam Benya, said “the rumours of famine in Sudan are pure fabrication,” Sudan’s state news agency reported.

Along with representatives from the agriculture, media and foreign ministries, she said some aid agencies were using “food as a pretext” to push political agendas.

The Sudanese government, loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has been based in Port Sudan since the capital Khartoum became a war zone when fighting began in April 2023.

It has repeatedly been accused of hindering international efforts to assess the food security situation.

The authorities have also been accused of creating bureaucratic hurdles to humanitarian work and blocking visas for foreign teams.

‘Only a ceasefire’

The International Rescue Committee, a charity which has called Sudan the “biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded”, said the army was “leveraging its status as the internationally recognised government (and blocking) the UN and other agencies from reaching RSF-controlled areas”.

In October, experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council accused both sides of using “starvation tactics” and demanded that the army and RSF “stop immediately obstructing aid delivery in Sudan.”

Last month, the World Food Programme said Sudan risks becoming the world’s largest hunger crisis in recent history.

At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, announcing an additional $200 million of new funding for Sudan’s humanitarian crisis, said people are forced to eat grass and peanut shells to survive in parts of the country.

The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 12 million, including millions who face a worsening hunger crisis.

Across the country, more than 24.6 million people – around half the population – face “high levels of acute food insecurity,” according to IPC, which said: “Only a ceasefire can reduce the risk of Famine spreading further”.