Cairo: The UN food agency said on Thursday that a third of Sudan’s population is currently facing a food crisis due to the mixed effects of climate shocks, political turmoil and rising global food prices. A joint report by the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization states that 15 million people in the East African country’s 18 provinces face severe food insecurity. “The combined effects of conflict, climate shocks, economic and political crises, rising costs and poor harvests are pushing millions of people into hunger and poverty,” said WFP representative in Sudan, Eddie Rowe.
Living conditions in cash-strapped Sudan deteriorated sharply since an already fragile economy was sent into free fall, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine compounding the economic crisis since an October military coup. The report said funding levels to meet humanitarian needs are low in Sudan, where 40% of the population is expected to go into a state of food insecurity by September. “We must act now to avoid rising levels of hunger and save the lives of those already affected,” Rowe said.
The October 25 military takeover upheld Sudan’s transition to democratic governance after three decades of repression and international isolation under autocratic President Omar al-Bashir. Sudan has been on a delicate path to democracy since a popular uprising in April 2019 forced the military to oust al-Bashir and his Islamic government.
Since the October coup there have been weekly protests calling for the military to step down. On Thursday, hundreds of people marched again towards the government headquarters in the capital Khartoum. The Central Sudan Doctors Committee, which monitors protesters’ deaths, said one demonstrator had died from injuries sustained by security forces firing on the crowd.
Thursday’s death brought the number of protesters killed since the coup to 102, the group said. The coup also halted two years of efforts by the deposed civilian government to overhaul the economy with billions of dollars in loans and aid from major Western governments and international financials. Institute. Such support was suspended after the coup.
The west Darfur town of Krinik, where tribal conflicts killed more than 200 people in April, was the most affected, with 90% of the townspeople starving, the report said.
Sudan was mired in an economic crisis after the oil-rich south seceded in 2011 after decades of civil war, with it accounting for more than half of public revenues and 95% of exports. It became an international pariah in the early 1990s after excluding it from the global economy on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism and withholding credit from global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.
Former President Donald Trump removed Sudan from the blacklist after the transitional government agreed to pay $335 million in compensation to victims of attacks by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network while terrorist leaders in Sudan were living. The expulsion was also an incentive for Sudan to normalize relations with Israel.