Selangor Journal
A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border on November 9, 2023. — Picture by REUTERS

Acute hunger affects over half of Sudan’s population, UN says

NEW YORK, Aug 2 — More than half of Sudan’s population now face acute hunger, a United Nations spokesman said yesterday.

“More than half the population, that is, 26 million human beings in Sudan, now face acute hunger, including 755,000 people facing catastrophic conditions, with hunger-related deaths also recorded,” Xinhua quoted Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for United Nations secretary-general António Guterres, as saying at a daily briefing.

The latest report of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) revealed that catastrophic hunger conditions have been projected for the first time in the history of the IPC survey in Sudan, Dujarric said.

Fourteen areas in the country have been declared “at risk of famine” in the coming months, he said. “To give you some context, one in every two Sudanese struggles to put enough food on their plates every single day.”

The World Food Programme (WFP) is scaling up its emergency response to save more lives in the country, by increasing the amount of assistance, and identifying innovative and effective ways to deliver immediate assistance to millions of people across Sudan and specially in hard-to-reach areas, according to Dujarric.

“WFP warns we are in a race against time to stop famine in its tracks,” he said, highlighting an urgent need for a massive increase in funding to ramp up assistance at the scale required to avert famine.

The United Nations and its partners warn more people in Sudan will be pushed into catastrophic levels of hunger if the current war, which started in April 2023, does not stop.

— Bernama

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