People who fled the Zamzam refugee camp after it fell under RSF control rest in a makeshift encampment in an open field near the town of Tawila in war-torn Sudan's western Darfur region on April 13.-/AFP/Getty Images
Rapidly spreading starvation is reducing many of Sudan’s children to skin and bones, with an entire city now facing the threat of famine after a year under a brutal military siege, United Nations relief workers say.
Some Sudanese are so desperate that they have resorted to eating animal fodder and food waste in an attempt to survive, UN agencies warned on Tuesday.
Famine was first declared last year in the Zamzam refugee camp in the Darfur region of western Sudan. But many more places are now on the brink of starvation, including the city of El Fasher, the besieged capital of North Darfur, the UN says.
Famine is also looming in sites near the national capital, Khartoum.
“Malnutrition is rife, and many of the children are reduced to just skin and bones,” said Sheldon Yett, Sudan representative of the UN children’s agency UNICEF, at a briefing on Tuesday after travelling to some of the sites.
More than 640,000 children under the age of five are at heightened risk of death from violence, disease and hunger as the fighting in North Darfur intensifies, and the number of children with severe acute malnutrition has doubled, UNICEF said in a report this weekend.
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Across Sudan, more than 30 million people are in dire need of emergency aid, and 14 million have been forced to flee their homes because of the civil war, the UN says.
Since the conflict erupted in 2023, the two warring sides – the Sudanese military and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – have been locked in a vicious power struggle across the country, killing tens of thousands of civilians, with weapons from the United Arab Emirates reportedly fuelling the RSF offensive.
But the situation is far worse in El Fasher, which is enduring a daily bombardment of artillery shelling and drone attacks by RSF fighters.
“Children are dying from hunger, disease, and direct violence,” Mr. Yett told the briefing.
“They are being cut off from the very services that could save their lives. We are on the verge of irreversible damage to an entire generation of children.”
For more than a year, relief agencies have been unable to send help into El Fasher because all supply routes have been blocked by fighting.
When UN agencies tried to send a convoy of food to El Fasher in June, the convoy was attacked, five people were killed and the supplies were destroyed.
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After more than two years of chaos, nobody knows the city’s current population, because refugees have entered and fled the city in large numbers as fighting surged across Darfur. Estimates of the population range from 300,000 to more than a million. It is the last city in Darfur that the RSF does not control.
Because of the siege, the price of basic food supplies such as wheat and sorghum have skyrocketed in El Fasher. Prices are now nearly five times higher than in the rest of the country, according to the UN food agency, the World Food Program.
“Community kitchens were set up by local groups during the war to provide hot meals to hungry people, but only very few are still functioning,” WFP said in a report on Tuesday.
“Civilian infrastructure – including markets and clinics – have been attacked. Many who have managed to flee have cited an escalation of rampant violence, looting, and sexual assault.”
In addition to the malnutrition crisis, diseases such as cholera are rampant. More than 2,100 cholera cases and 80 deaths have been reported in Darfur in recent weeks.
“Children whose bodies are weakened by hunger are far more likely to contract cholera and to die from it,” UNICEF’s report says.
One of the deadliest cholera outbreaks is in the overcrowded town of Tawila, where more than 500,000 people have sought shelter in poor conditions since the fighting spread in April.
Deep funding cuts by global donors, led by a severe cut by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, have worsened the crisis. The UN has appealed for US$4.2-billion to help Sudan this year, but only 23 per cent of the target has been reached.
For more than two years, every attempt to negotiate a ceasefire has floundered. A recent effort by the United States to convene a meeting of Middle Eastern powers to discuss Sudan collapsed when the countries squabbled over the wording of a statement.