Hunger in Sudan: A Human-Made Catastrophe

Sudan’s ongoing war began in April 2023 as a conflict between the leaderships of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the country’s military under General Abdelfattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), formally a counter-insurgency force and part of the state apparatus, effectively a mainly tribal, private militia under General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, aka Hemedti. In October 2021, both generals had jointly overthrown the then civilian government and placed the country under military rule. Burhan acted as de-facto president, Hemedti as his deputy. By the end of 2022, after realizing the challenges of effectively governing the country, the two generals concluded a political agreement with civilian leaders aimed at reinstating civilian rule.

In spring 2023, when details of this agreement were still being worked out, differences between the two military leaders intensified. One major point of contention was the integration of the RSF into the regular military, as envisaged in the agreement, which would have ultimately deprived Hemedti of his independent power base. The larger cause of the war, however, was the power conflict between the generals and their respective military, political or tribal networks over control of the state and its resources. (1)

Military and political dynamics

While the war started as a conflict between SAF and RSF, both sides increasingly relied on political and tribal militias and recruited increasing numbers of fighters, thereby turning the conflict into a broader civil war. Regional and international powers have made various attempts to mediate and end the fighting. Some have also – and sometimes simultaneously – fueled the war.

At the outset, the RSF made rapid military gains, controlling most of the capital within days. Over the following months they gained control over four of the five Darfur states, parts of Southern and Western Kordofan as well as the main connecting routes between Khartoum and these areas. For around a year, they also controlled Jazeera state, Sudan’s most productive agricultural area. The military maintained a few besieged pockets in Khartoum as well as control over the North and East of the country and most of the states along the Nile. By the end of 2024, the military situation began to shift. The SAF retook Jazeera state and made territorial gains in the larger Khartoum area. By March 2025, they had recovered Khartoum.

For their initial military success, the RSF relied on their highly mobile light forces. They were also able to mobilize fighters from mainly Arab tribes and other militias in Darfur and the Kordofans, other marginalized areas in Sudan, and to some extent from Arab tribes in Chad or Niger. The SAF relied heavily on their air force and on Islamist militias who had supported the military-Islamist regime of Omar al-Bashir that had fallen after a popular uprising in 2019, as well as armed groups from Darfur or Blue Nile State that had been fighting the old regime in the early 2000s. During the course of the war, the SAF was able to train new troops and acquire new armament, including highly effective Iranian drones.

Neither the RSF nor the SAF would have been able to sustain their fighting power without material support from external powers. Reportedly, the RSF received such support from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which have repeatedly denied the delivery of arms to the RSF. Support also came from or through South Sudan, Chad, and Libya, and, initially at least, from Russia. The SAF received support, among others, from Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and also from Russia.

Most civilian political forces objected to the war, remained non-partisan or spoke out against both warring parties. The continuation of the fighting, however, also caused splits and polarizations among civilian actors. As both warring parties had no tolerance for oppositional or anti-war movements, political and intellectual leaders who refused to take sides had little choice but to leave the country. A coalition of political and civil society actors that sought to unite Sudan's civilian voices eventually split: The mainstream rejected both warring parties, while smaller factions decided to form an alternative government that would effectively be under RSF control. The Islamic Movement of Sudan, which had been the main political force behind the Bashir regime, decided to support the SAF – no doubt with the aim of taking political power once the war was over.

Regional and international attempts to end the war remained unsuccessful. A US-Saudi initiative for a humanitarian ceasefire was accepted in principle by both sides. However, joint humanitarian commitments agreed in the so-called Jeddah Declaration remained little more than ink on paper. Mediation efforts by the African Union, IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development – a subregional body), or neighboring states did not get the necessary buy-in from the warring parties. The role of the United Nations has been largely limited to humanitarian efforts since its political mission (UNITAMS – United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan) was disbanded at the request of the SAF-backed government.

International powers have called for an end to the conflict, but did not make this a priority. While the US under the Biden administration had been engaged, though not at the highest level, there has been no engagement so far under President Donald Trump. In Europe, too, public and political attention has tended to focus on Ukraine or the Middle East. Sudan is far away, and most of the displaced remained in Sudan or fled to Sudan's neighbors instead of knocking on Europe's doors. The EU and its member states have provided humanitarian aid, but hardly enough to meet the demands of the UN Humanitarian Appeal or, more recently, to compensate for the loss of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) payments.

Hunger in Sudan: no natural disaster

In two years of war, the largest humanitarian crisis globally has developed in Sudan. As of March 2025, 12.6 million people have been displaced from their homes, most of them (close to 9 million) inside the country. 30.4 million are in need of humanitarian aid; 24.6 million face high levels of acute food insecurity (phase IPC3+), while more than 600,000 people face catastrophic food insecurity (IPC 5). In December 2024, the IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) Famine Review Committee confirmed famine conditions in five locations in North Darfur and the Nuba Mountains expecting an additional five locations in North Darfur to face famine conditions by May 2025. Additionally, cholera and other diseases are threatening the most vulnerable.

The hunger crisis in Sudan is human-made – literally. Sudan has faced food insecurities before, but the way the war has been conducted has brought the entire food system to the brink. Food production dropped dramatically. Already in 2023, cereal production in Sudan was down by 46% compared to the previous year. It was further disrupted when the conflict spread to Jazeera state, which had accounted for 50% of the Sudan’s wheat and 10 per cent of its sorghum production. According to local reports, RSF forces repeatedly burned farms, looted stocks and markets or destroyed villages in Jazeera state in addition to large scale attacks against the civilian population.

In other parts of the country, too, farmers have been unable to access their fields, to plant and harvest due to insecurity. Mass displacement has exacerbated the food crisis, and steep inflation made staple food unaffordable for many, particularly for people in urban war zones who had lost their livelihoods.

Both warring sides have been accused of violating international humanitarian law. The SAF has launched air attacks on densely populated areas and civilian infrastructure including markets. The RSF has been involved in large scale looting, raping of women and girls, and ethnically motivated mass killings of citizens from the Masalit people of West Darfur.

Both parties have also, in different ways, restricted or obstructed the delivery of humanitarian aid to affected populations. In June 2024, a group of UN special rapporteurs stated that both “the SAF and the RSF are using food as a weapon and starving civilians” pointing to the looting of humanitarian assistance and to the deliberate targeting of humanitarian workers and local volunteers. Similarly, the International Fact Finding Mission on Sudan in their October 2024 report found that SAF and RSF violated their obligations to allow unimpeded and rapid passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need.

Large scale looting of humanitarian and medical supplies has disrupted aid delivery from the outset of the conflict. In June 2023, a few months into the war, the WFP warehouse in El-Obeid was looted. At that point, WFP had recorded losses totaling 60 million USD. Most recently, UNICEF deplored the looting of humanitarian supplies for children from Al Bashir Hospital in Khartoum. Looting has also affected INGOs and local providers of humanitarian aid.

The RSF have not only looted warehouses – or tolerated such looting by their affiliates – but have themselves caused malnutrition and hunger in Darfur. This has been particularly evident in El-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur state, and in IDP camps in its surrounding which have been under siege by the RSF for more than a year. Zam Zam camp (North Darfur) where famine conditions were found present in July 2024, is especially exposed. The camp population has been in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, yet Zam Zam has been incredibly difficult to reach and to operate in for humanitarian actors. In February 2025, both Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) and WFP had to halt operations in Zam Zam due to RSF attacks and heavy fighting.

The RSF, too, through its affiliated agency SARHO (Sudan Agency for Relief and Humanitarian Operations) has restricted and hindered humanitarian aid, shrinking humanitarian space in areas under RSF control. UN OCHA reported that SARHO was imposing travel restrictions, had restricted supplies from reaching localities outside of RSF control, and imposed armed escorts.

Implications for local and international humanitarian actors

Restrictions and obstruction have undermined efforts by UN agencies, INGOs and Sudanese-led entities to reach war-affected populations.

Local actors have stepped up their efforts to respond to the crisis, including in areas that UN agencies and other international humanitarian actors cannot reach. The so-called Emergency Response Rooms and other mutual aid groups are running community kitchens in active conflict zones, are supporting IDPs as well as survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, and evacuating civilians to safety. One of their main assets is the highly decentralized provision of aid. But to carry on their work, these grassroots organizations need international support.

UN agencies and donor countries have found ways to fund them directly. At the same time, cuts in US development and humanitarian funding are undermining precisely these efforts. The freezing of US humanitarian assistance that followed President Trump's executive order to suspend most USAID activities reportedly forced up to 80% – more than 1,100 – community kitchens to close. This was estimated to affect 2 million people. For community kitchens in Khartoum state, this came at a time of increased need caused first by intensified combat, then large scale looting of markets by the RSF as they withdrew from Khartoum.

As the SAF retook the capital, local humanitarian actors and activists fear reprisal attacks from the army and associated militias. Both tend to see people who stayed in Khartoum under RSF control as “collaborators”, and the Emergency Rooms which largely originated from the anti-military Resistance Committees as adversaries.

No end to the war, yet

After the SAF’s recapture of Khartoum, the military conflict in the North, East, and center of the country – between the Nile and the Red Sea – is most probably over. Public life is likely to normalize under a military regime. Most international and regional actors will regard the military government as representing the state and consider the RSF merely as an insurgent force.

This does not mean that the war has ended. Both sides have vowed to continue the fight. While RSF fighters had little to defend in Khartoum, the Darfur and Kordofan states – which the RSF still controls in part or entirely – are home to most of their fighters. The SAF leadership has declared that it will fight on to liberate the entire country. A military campaign to regain control in Darfur will be a challenge, however: it would mean to fight a battle-hardened insurgency defending what it sees as its tribal territory. It is worth remembering that the SAF was only able to defeat the insurgency in Darfur in the early 2000s by using Arab militias, including the core of today's RSF.

If the fighting does not stop, there is a high risk of a de-facto partition of the country or even a fragmentation of Darfur and other peripheral areas into different warlord fiefdoms. This would be entirely new for Sudan which has seen wars raging in the periphery for decades while Khartoum and the central areas were firmly under government control.

Ending the war requires more than a military stalemate. It needs concerted efforts by local, regional and international actors at five interlinked levels.

All actors across these different levels that obstruct concrete efforts to end the war must be held responsible for prolonging the worst humanitarian crisis of our time.

Dr. Wibke Hansen is an expert on peace and security based in Berlin. She worked for UNDP Sudan (zwischen 2021 und 2024 ) und for the UN mission to Sudan (2007-09, 2010-2011).

Prof. Dr. Volker Perthes was Special Representative of the UN Secretary General (SRSG) für Sudan from 2021 to 2023 and head of UNITAMS. He is an independent author and guest at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, of which he was the director from 2005 until 2020.

Footnote:

[1] _{For more detail, see Gerrit Kurtz, Power Relations in Sudan After the Fall of Bashir, SWP Research Paper 5, May 2024  https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2024RP05/; Volker Perthes, Sudan’s Transition to War and the Limits of the UN’s Good Offices, SWP Research Paper 14, October 2024 https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2024RP14/}