Attachments
Key Messages
After 11 months of conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), humanitarian needs in Sudan are reaching new highs and will steeply escalate during an atypically early start of the lean season in March through September 2024. Crisis (IPC Phase 3) is expected to be widespread, while Emergency (IPC Phase 4) is anticipated to expand significantly across Greater Darfur, Greater Kordofan, Khartoum, Red Sea, Kassala, and parts of the southeast. Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) is expected among households in parts of West Darfur, Khartoum, and among the displaced population more broadly, particularly in hard-to-reach areas of Greater Darfur.
The sharp deterioration will be driven by a large national cereal availability gap, the inability to efficiently distribute available food from surplus to deficit areas, and the severe decline in household purchasing capacity amid unprecedented displacement and disruption to livelihoods. Humanitarians continue to face significant access challenges due to the inability to safely move convoys across conflict frontlines and restrictions on cross-border flows at the Chad border. Although the Al Tina border crossing with North Darfur is now open, distance and poor road conditions will pose serious challenges to the flow of aid, particularly in the rainy season. All impediments to trade and humanitarian assistance must be removed, assurances of safe passage to populations in need must be guaranteed, communication networks should be fully restored, and a ceasefire must be reached immediately to avoid further loss of life.
FEWS NET estimates the cereal availability gap will be around two million metric tons, driven by below-average 2023/2024 harvests of the main cereals, severe reductions in imports, and widespread looting of private stocks. With physical and financial access to available food severely constrained, households are expected to increasingly rely on negative livelihood coping strategies, including very heavy dependence on already thinly stretched family and community support, consumption of seeds, increased sales of natural resources, near-liquidation of assets (including livestock and productive assets), and risky migration in search of available income sources such as artisanal mining, given declining access to agricultural labor.
In addition to the most likely scenario detailed above, FEWS NET has assessed there is a risk of Famine (IPC Phase 5) in parts of West Darfur, Khartoum, and areas in Greater Darfur with high concentrations of protracted and often re-displaced persons. Populations in these areas already face the most severe access constraints to available food amid high levels of conflict, and the destruction of health services, poor living conditions, and increased waterborne disease incidence during the upcoming rainy season are expected to exacerbate levels of acute malnutrition. As a result, there is a credible risk that the severity of hunger, acute malnutrition, and mortality would accelerate to meet the criteria for Famine (IPC Phase 5) if actions taken by armed parties – either through deliberate isolation of households or through escalation of intense conflict – prevent households from migrating to safer areas in search of food and income for a sustained period of time.