The United Nations has declared the conflict in Sudan the world’s ‘most devastating humanitarian and displacement crisis’.

The war between Sudanese government forces and the Rapid Support Force (RSF) militia has been catastrophic for Sudan’s civilians.

Around 30.4 million people, representing two thirds of the total population, need support in the form of food, health care and other necessities. More than nine million people are displaced internally, a number equal to the population of Switzerland, and almost four million in neighbouring countries.

The conflict has delivered an economic collapse, sending the prices of food, fuel and other basic goods skyrocketing and putting them beyond the reach of most households.

Hunger is becoming an acute and growing problem with more than half the population facing high levels of food insecurity, and famine conditions have been declared in five locations in North Darfur and the eastern Nuba mountains. Famine is expected to spread to five more areas before the middle of the year.

“This is a critical moment, as the consequences of food insecurity are already being felt in parts of South Kordofan, where families are surviving on dangerously limited food supplies, and malnutrition rates are rising sharply,” said the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan Clementine Nkweta-Salami.

Relief efforts are almost impossible because of the lack of security, which is constraining humanitarian access and preventing the movement of supplies and endangering aid workers, the UN says.

Sudan’s health system has been gutted with clinics attacked and many health workers forced to flee.

Almost 20,800 civilians have been reported killed since the beginning of the conflict, and the levels of violence in Sudan are getting worse.

At the start of February, at least 275 people were killed in just a week, a threefold increase on the previous week’s death toll.

Civilians are being hit by artillery shelling, airstrikes and aerial drone attacks. The UN says the worst affected regions are South Kordofan and Blue Nile states.

Aid workers have also been targets of intimidation and attacks, with reports that some have been falsely accused of collaborating with the RSF.

A UN mission produced a dossier of dire human rights abuses committed by both sides and called for investigations into the violations, and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

The dossier claimed that women and girls were the most severely impacted by the conflict, with reports of rape, forced marriage and abductions.

Despite the dire humanitarian situation, some aid is being delivered in Sudan.

The World Health Organisation and UNICEF are still operational, supporting immunisation for cholera and malaria, and deploying mobile medical teams.

The World Food Program – the UN’s emergency food aid agency – is saving thousands of lives every day and the Food and Agriculture Organisation has distributed seeds to over half a million households during the planting season.

In all, 15.6 million people received aid from the UN in 2024.

But the UN says a lack of funds is severely limiting its ability to help Sudan’s population. UNHCR and partners have been able to provide less than the bare minimum of support for refugees, and food rations have been drastically cut, adding to food insecurity.

The UN has launched an appeal, based on estimated humanitarian needs, for $US4.2 billion, with an additional $1.8 billion needed to support those hosting refugees in neighbouring countries.

The conflict began in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, on April 15 2023 as an escalating power struggle between the two main factions of Sudan’s military regime turned deadly.

On one side are the Sudanese armed forces who remain broadly loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler. On the other side, are the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a collection of militia, who follow the former warlord General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The RSF was founded by the former dictatorial ruler of Sudan Omar al-Bashir as an Arab counterinsurgency militia known as the Janjaweed. Bashir wanted to crush a rebellion in the Darfur region that began in the 1990s more than 20 years ago due to the repression of the local population.

Read the UN analysis here: Sudan, ‘the most devastating humanitarian and displacement crisis in the world’ | UN News