The number of children in Sudan facing severe food shortages has almost doubled in six months with about 75% of children now going hungry daily as conflict drives hunger levels to record levels, raising fears of rising child malnutrition, Save the Children said.
Based on drastic new figures from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Partnership – the leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises – Save the Children found 16.4 million children, or three in every four children, now face crisis, emergency or catastrophe levels of hunger – up from 8.3 million last December. Fourteen months of devastating conflict in Sudan’s crop production areas of Darfur, Kordofan, Khartoum and Al Jazirah, rising displacement and severe restrictions on humanitarian access along with a gaping hole in funding have created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
Lack of adequate food can lead to malnutrition which, without treatment, can have long term implications on children’s health and development, and even kill, Save the Children said. Save the Children is calling for an immediate ceasefire and meaningful progress towards a lasting peace agreement. In the meantime, the child rights organisation is pushing for safe, unimpeded humanitarian access to civilians across border routes and fighting lines inside Sudan; the safeguarding of vital infrastructure essential for food systems, such as markets, agricultural land, and storage facilities; and immediate intervention from the international community to fully fund the Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan to save children’s lives.
Save the Children has worked in Sudan since 1983, and is currently supporting children and their families across Sudan providing health, nutrition, education, child protection and food security and livelihoods support. Save the Children is also supporting refugees from Sudan in Egypt and South Sudan.