Famine Declared in El Fasher and Kadugli After Reported Militia Massacres and Mass Displacement

Famine declared in two Sudanese cities as violence fuels mass displacement

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) announced on Monday that El Fasher in western Darfur and Kadugli in South Kordofan have officially reached famine conditions. The IPC also warned that about 20 other localities across Darfur and Kordofan remain at high risk of severe food insecurity.

Both towns had been besieged by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in a conflict that has gripped Sudan since April 2023. The RSF seized El Fasher last weekend after an 18-month siege that had already left the city severely short of food. Witnesses who fled reported mass killings, sexual violence and executions as tens of thousands tried to escape.

Scale of the crisis

The IPC estimates that 21.2 million people in Sudan now face high levels of acute food insecurity after roughly 30 months of fighting, with 375,000 people in 'catastrophe' conditions. The agency warns that famine conditions in the newly declared areas could persist until January 2026, although favorable agroclimatic conditions after the harvest could improve food availability and move millions of people to less severe phases of food insecurity.

Severely inadequate funding is undermining the urgent ramp-up of assistance, and ongoing fighting in Kordofan and Darfur hinders consistent outreach to those in need.

Drivers and indicators

Beyond active conflict, the IPC cites worsening terms of trade, runaway inflation, currency depreciation, broken trade routes and supply chain disruptions as drivers of the crisis. The IPC uses a five-phase acute food insecurity scale and reserves the term famine for phase 5. Phase 5 is characterized by one in five households facing extreme lack of food and starvation, at least 30 percent of children suffering acute malnutrition, and mortality rates of at least 2 people per 10,000 per day from starvation or malnutrition compounded by disease.

Humanitarian response and gaps

The World Food Programme says it is currently reaching 4 million people each month across Darfur, Kordofan, Khartoum and Al Jazira, but urgently needs 658 million US dollars over the next six months to scale assistance to 8 million people per month. The IPC bulletin stresses that humanitarian response and local support mechanisms are critically underfunded and currently reach only about 21 percent of those in need.

The United Nations reported that tens of thousands fled El Fasher after the city fell to the RSF, while the International Rescue Committee said roughly 5,000 people reached safety in the town of Tawila, about 30 miles away across the desert.

One of the most serious reported attacks occurred at the Saudi Hospital, the last functioning hospital in El Fasher during the siege. The World Health Organization said at least 460 people, including patients and health workers, were killed in repeated attacks. Researchers at Yale School of Public Health's Humanitarian Research Lab used satellite imagery to corroborate scenes on the ground and identified a previously unreported potential mass killing at an RSF detention site at the former Children s Hospital.

The IPC and humanitarian agencies are calling for a rapid, large-scale increase in protected humanitarian access and funding to prevent further deaths from starvation and disease.

Sources: Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, World Food Programme, World Health Organization, United Nations, International Rescue Committee, Yale Humanitarian Research Lab.