War and drought push Darfur and Kordofan toward famine, food monitor warns

Sudan's hunger crisis is crossing lines that monitors use to define famine, and the war that caused it is still going.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the global partnership that includes the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization, said in an alert on Monday that malnutrition is worsening across Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan. In two camps for displaced people in Eastern Jebel Marra, South Darfur, surveys found acute malnutrition among children at 38 percent and 30.8 percent, both above the 20 percent famine threshold, alongside severe hunger and high death rates. Across Greater Darfur, 13 of 17 nutrition surveys since January found critical levels of acute malnutrition. In Nyala, the share of children arriving for nutrition care who needed treatment for severe acute malnutrition more than doubled between January and August, from about 5 percent to 11 percent.

War built this, and drought is finishing it. The IPC called Greater Kordofan the epicenter of Sudan's conflict: more than 300,000 people have been driven from their homes there since October 2025, and markets have absorbed more than 170 airstrikes, looting incidents or armed clashes this year. Two trucks contracted by the World Food Programme came under fire on October 2 and 3, killing at least one person. Drought linked to El Nino now covers more than half the country. In North Darfur, 64 percent of cropland shows poor plant growth, and rains that arrived in late September came too late to save most cereal crops, which points to further price rises.

The response is not keeping pace. As of August, only 26 percent of the children expected to need care for severe acute malnutrition with medical complications had received it, and the IPC noted that as many as two thirds of those untreated children could die. Less than half of the humanitarian appeal for Sudan had been funded as of October 8. The IPC's Famine Review Committee said survey data is too thin for a full famine analysis but that the evidence points to a rapidly worsening situation, and called the crisis a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions. The alert asked for an end to the fighting, safe and sustained aid access, especially in North and West Kordofan, and funding on a large scale.