North Darfur’s capital has been under RSF siege for more than a year with key roads blocked and supplies running out.
Thousands of families trapped in the besieged city of el-Fasher in western Sudan are at “risk of starvation”, the World Food Programme (WFP) warns as the country’s brutal civil war rages well into its third year.
Since May last year, el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, has been under siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been at war with the government-aligned Sudanese armed forces (SAF) since April 2023.
The RSF has encircled the city, blocking all major roads and trapping hundreds of thousands of civilians, who have dwindling food supplies and limited humanitarian access.
“Everyone in el-Fasher is facing a daily struggle to survive,” said Eric Perdison, the WFP’s regional director for East and Southern Africa.
“People’s coping mechanisms have been completely exhausted by over two years of war. Without immediate and sustained access, lives will be lost.”
El-Fasher is the last major city in the Darfur region still held by the SAF. It has come under renewed attack by RSF fighters this year since the paramilitary was ousted from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.
A major RSF assault on the Zamzam displacement camp near el-Fasher in April forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee. Many have sought shelter in the state capital.
According to the WFP, prices for staple foods like sorghum and wheat, used to make traditional flatbreads and porridge, are as much as 460 percent higher in el-Fasher than in other parts of Sudan.
Markets and clinics have been attacked while community kitchens that once fed displaced families have largely shut down due to a lack of supplies, the United Nations agency added.
Desperate families are reportedly surviving on animal fodder and food waste while acute malnutrition is soaring, especially among children.
According to the UN, nearly 40 percent of children under five in el-Fasher are now acutely malnourished, and 11 percent are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
The rainy season, which peaks in August, is further hampering efforts to reach the city as roads rapidly deteriorate.
Last year, famine was first declared in Zamzam and later spread to two other nearby camps – al-Salam and Abu Shouk – and some parts of southern Sudan, according to the UN.
‘Irreversible damage’
The war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and created what the UN describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises.
The country in effect is split in two with the army controlling the north, east and centre of Sudan and the RSF dominating nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
Last month, a Sudanese coalition led by the RSF announced it was establishing an alternative government in a challenge to the military-led authorities in Khartoum.
The new self-proclaimed government could deepen divisions, worsen the humanitarian crisis and lead to competing institutions as the war rages.
The crises are happening as UN agencies face one of their worst funding cuts in decades, compounded by decisions by the United States and other donor states to slash their foreign aid funding.
Funding cuts are now driving an entire generation of children in Sudan to the brink of irreversible harm amid a scaling-back in support, UNICEF warned on Tuesday.
“Children have limited access to safe water, food, healthcare. Malnutrition is rife, and many good children are reduced to just skin, bones,” Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan, said, speaking via videolink from Port Sudan.
Children were being cut off from life-saving services due to funding cuts while the scale of need is staggering, UNICEF said.
“With recent funding cuts, many of our partners in Khartoum and elsewhere have been forced to scale back. … We are being stretched to the limit across Sudan with children dying of hunger,” Yett said.
“We are on the verge of irreversible damage being done to an entire generation of children in Sudan.”
Only 23 percent of the $4.16bn global humanitarian response plan for Sudan has been funded, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“It has been one year since famine was confirmed in Zamzam camp, and no food has reached this area. El-Fasher remains under siege. We need that access now,” Jens Laerke of OCHA said.
Meanwhile, a cholera outbreak in North Darfur has further added to the desperation of families there.
Deaths due to the water-borne disease have risen to 191 in the region, according to Adam Rijal, spokesman for the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur.
At least 62 people have died from the disease in Tawila in North Darfur, Rijal said in a statement. Nearly 100 people have also died in the Kalma and Otash camps, both displacement camps located in the city of Nyala in South Darfur state.
About 4,000 cases of cholera have been reported in the region, according to the statement.
