Famine has been confirmed in a camp sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Sudan’s North Darfur Region.
The declaration for Zamzam camp is a result of conflict, displacement and humanitarian access constraints.
Update June 27: Read new IPC report on Sudan here
At a tent settlement in the Chadian border town of Adre, Ahmat feeds blue cloth into his foot-powered sewing machine, as a popular folksong from his native Sudan plays in loops over a loudspeaker.
Famine has been confirmed in Zamzam camp, which shelters hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Sudan’s North Darfur Region, as conflict, displacement and humanitarian-access constraints have devastating consequences.
Excellencies, the World Food Programme, and other humanitarian agencies, have been warning for months now of a widespread collapse in food security across the country.
We have been clear that famine is a real and dangerous possibility: caused by the raging conflict, widespread displacement, and above all the denial of humanitarian access by the warring parties.
In Mar
Zenebech Kahsay is relieved to watch her children play once again, their energy renewed at last by bread she’s baked after receiving a 15kg bag of wheat from the World Food Programme (WFP) at a food distribution in Tahtay Adyabo, in Ethiopia’s northern province of Tigray.
“My children were dizzy with hunger,” explains Kahsay as she grinds dark brown grains of wheat with a pestle and mortar.
Breaking: WFP Sudan latest
In the eastern city of Port Sudan, where tens of thousands of war-displaced seek shelter, frail infants with stick-thin arms chalk up dangerously high malnutrition levels. Hungry people pack schools and other makeshift housing centres, clinging to scant belongings from their old lives.
WFP is working tirelessly to get aid into the hands of people who are facing starvation, and we are saving thousands of lives every single day in Sudan. So far this year, we’ve supported 5.4 million people with life-saving food and nutrition assistance. As we speak, we are urgently getting basic staple foods into the hands of 180,000 people facing famine in Zamzam camp.
Civilians in El Fasher and the wider Darfur region are already facing devastating levels of hunger, yet deliveries of food assistance have been intermittent due to fighting and endless bureaucratic hurdles.
Marianne Ward spent Orthodox Christmas Day on Ukraine’s shifting frontlines, visiting a community in Orhikiv, east of Zaporizha, that had been cut off for months from humanitarian assistance.
“The families were all living underground, in a basement, with improvized wood stoves for heating,” says Ward, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Deputy Country Director in Ukraine, o
World Food Programme (2023). Regional Bureau for Eastern Africa - Logistics in Eastern Africa: Delivering amidst increased challenges.
Annual Country Reports
Available at: Annual Country Reports 2023 | World Food Programme (wfp.org)