The joint statement estimates that 41% of Sudan’s population faces acute food insecurity, including five million at emergency levels, and calls for safe, unrestricted aid access.
The US and 30 other Western states have urged Sudan’s warring parties to remove obstacles to humanitarian aid to prevent famine. Their joint warning, published in the US on 26 October, estimates that 19.5 million people face high levels of acute food insecurity—difficulty securing enough food.
Sudan’s war began in April 2023 after a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces, the country’s military, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Signatories to the warning include European Union member states, the UK, Canada, Switzerland and Norway, alongside the US.
| Who gives the estimate | People affected | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| World Health Organization (WHO) | More than 33 million | People needing assistance overall |
| Joint statement | 19.5 million, or 41% of the population | People experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity |
| Joint statement | Five million | People facing emergency levels of hunger, included in the 19.5 million |
WHO’s broader assistance figure is not a count of people facing acute hunger. The statement’s five million at emergency levels are a more severely affected group within its food-insecurity estimate, not an additional five million people.
Yusuf Roble, Islamic Relief’s East Africa regional director, told BBC News that people returning to Omdurman were finding their homes destroyed or looted, leaving very little to survive on.
Roble described meeting a mother of seven who had not known her husband’s whereabouts for three and a half years. Her husband had been the family’s sole breadwinner. The family depended on a community kitchen for meals, but funding cuts had left the kitchen without secure long-term support.
Only 40% of Sudan’s 2026 humanitarian needs plan had been funded as of September, Roble said.
The signatories said conflict was the main driver of hunger, damaging critical infrastructure and disrupting food production. They also blamed what they described as systematic obstruction of aid and the effects of El Niño, which they said had reduced rainfall and increased drought across more than half of Sudan.
Without immediate action, the statement warns, the number of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition could exceed the projected 825,000. That is a warning about a possible worsening of children’s nutrition, alongside the statement’s warning of famine risk.
The signatories said the parties to the conflict bore primary responsibility for alleviating people’s suffering. They urged both sides to lift all impediments to humanitarian assistance and allow full, safe, rapid and unimpeded access.
The UK government has imposed travel bans and asset freezes on commanders from both sides of Sudan’s war whom it suspects of sexual violence during the siege of El Fasher.
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An official blamed the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces for strikes on five power stations, while residents described risks to refrigerated medicine, food stocks and efforts to resume farming.
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A young worker supporting his siblings was among the reported dead. Sudan’s military leader reportedly ordered an investigation into the attack near the Egyptian border.
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