Norwegian Refugee Council on famine in Sudan: ‘People just cannot afford to buy food anymore’

In a joint statement on Tuesday, the heads of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the Danish Refugee Council, and Mercy Corps urgently call on the international community “to address the immense hunger crisis” in Sudan”. Radio Dabanga spoke with NRC spokesperson Mathilde Vu about the suffering of the Sudanese and the federal Minister of Agriculture’s denial of famine in the country.

On the same day the Sudanese Minister of Agriculture denied famine in the country, the heads of the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Danish Refugee Council, and Mercy Corps state that “We cannot be clearer: Sudan is experiencing a starvation crisis of historic proportions.

“And yet, the silence is deafening. People are dying of hunger, every day, and yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions,” they say.

“Every opportunity to head-off the worst of this situation has been missed, and now the people of Sudan face a crisis unmatched in decades. As the peak of the lean season approaches, widespread death and suffering is advancing across the county. Children are starving to death.

“More than 25 million people – more than half the population – are suffering acute food insecurity. Many families have for months been reduced to one meal a day and have been forced to eat leaves or insects. The people of Sudan have shown immense resilience and strength over the past 17 months: they now have nowhere left to turn.”

‘Heartbreaking’

Asked about the statements of the minister who denied the existence of famine in the country, NRC spokesperson Mathilde Vu told Radio Dabanga yesterday that “as a humanitarian organisation, nobody wants to see a famine in Sudan [..].

“What we’re seeing on the ground is people who can barely afford one meal a day. When they manage to get one meal a day, it’s aseeda (thick sorghum porridge) and nothing else – which definitely is not covering the nutritious needs of someone. We see mothers, you know, decrease the amount of food that they eat because they need to feed their children. And we know that children are dying every day of hunger,” she said.

“So, I don’t think anyone wants to see that. It’s heartbreaking to see this happening in a country like Sudan that, as, you know, the minister sort of alludes to, has the potential to feed every.

“And the famine in Sudan is not about the availability of food. It’s also about the fact that people cannot afford the food anymore because they’ve been displaced and lost everything. The economy has collapsed, and they don’t have any means of livelihood anymore, because the prices are spiralling across the country.

“This is the reason why people are hungry. Not because Sudan is not producing enough food. It’s about being able to afford it.”

Concerning the collection of data about the numbers of hungry people in the various parts of Sudan, Vu said that “The minister is also right. It’s extremely difficult to collect data across the country”.

There are places in Sudan where “no famine watchdog” has collected data, she said. “That should be scary to all of us. We know that right now, based on the data that the IPC [Integrated Food Security Phase Classification] has collected that at least 14 locations are, I mean Zamzam [camp in North Darfur] plus 13 other locations are at the risk of famine.

“That is extremely scary and the fact that we don’t have access to [more places] across Sudan because of the conflict because of a of a blocking of movement, etcetera is extremely concerning. It means that the picture could even be worse than what we’re seeing right now.”

The NRC spokesperson explained that “what we did with this report in collaboration with the DRC and Mercy Corps, is actually go beyond the data”. Apart from numbers and statistics, the three organisations focus on what is means for the people. “What’s the human impact of this starvation. What do people have to go through in order to eat?

“It is terrible. It’s sometimes doing excruciating work for very long time in order to get very little for very little food. Sometimes it’s to live in undignified living condition because they can’t do anything else,” she explained.

“Sometimes it means also fleeing. We have more and more people who are crossing the border into Chad, not because of the violence, but because of hunger.”

‘Game changer’

Vu called the Sudanese government and army’s agreement to allow the transport of life-saving humanitarian aid through the Adré border crossing on the Sudan-Chad border to West Darfur in mid-August as a game changer. “This is a decision that, if applied well and if applied on the longer term, can actually save lives of millions.”

She lamented, however, the obstruction of trade and humanitarian transport by both warring parties. “Across Darfur there are a number of checkpoints, for example, that are also very harmful to traders.”

Traders are harassed and extorted by members of the belligerents, which has large repercussions on the prices of the goods. When less supplies are coming in, the prices go up, and people cannot afford food anymore.

“In general, the warring parties have not allowed humanitarian assistance to flow across the country, from Port Sudan into Darfur, from Port Sudan into Kordofan, from Port Sudan into Khartoum, for example,” she said, and urged the belligerents “to open all taps into the country, all cross-border points so that [..] aid can actually reach the people who need it the most and need it yesterday”.

As for Sudanese refugees returning from Ethiopia, where they have been suffering from hunger and thirst, and were prone to repeated attacks by armed bandits and members of the Fano militia fighting the Ethiopian government, she commented that “the situation is quite desperate and it’s quite heartbreaking to see that they couldn’t find asylum in a safe space in Ethiopia.

“At the moment we are in El Gedaref and we are registering them for [..] multi-purpose cash assistance. It’s basically cash assistance that they can use to cover the basics,” the NRC spokesperson said. “We prefer to give cash because that allows people to choose whatever they want to spend it on.”