Keystone-SDA
This year, 3.2 million children under the age of five are at risk of acute malnutrition in Sudan, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). This East African country is ravaged by a conflict between two warlords.
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January 10, 2025 – 12:30
(Keystone-ATS) “Among these 3.2 million children, around 772,000 children are at risk of suffering from severe acute malnutrition,” Eva Hinds, Unicef advocacy and communications manager in Sudan, told AFP on Thursday evening. This is the deadliest form of malnutrition.
In general, poor access to medical care and drinking water, lack of hygiene, inappropriate feeding practices especially for infants, children and women, as well as food insecurity represent the main structural causes of acute malnutrition, according to Unicef.
Five regions affected by famine
Famine has already struck five regions of Sudan, according to UN agencies based on a recent Food Security Classification System (IPC) report.
The IPC predicts famine will spread to five more districts in Sudan’s western Darfur region by May, a vast area that has seen the worst violence of the conflict. In addition, 17 other regions in western and central Sudan are also at risk of famine.
“Without immediate and unhindered humanitarian access to facilitate a significant scale-up of the multi-sectoral response, malnutrition risks worsening in these areas,” added Ms. Hinds.
Tens of thousands dead
Sudan has been hit for twenty months by a violent conflict between the army and the paramilitaries of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a war which has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, displaced 12 million people and pushed the country on the brink of famine.
The United Nations has described the situation as the world’s largest population displacement crisis.
Sudan’s military-aligned government has denied reports of famine, while aid agencies complain that access is blocked by bureaucratic obstacles and continued violence. The army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.
