Unpacking Famine in Sudan

In July 2024, famine was confirmed in Zamzam, a camp in Sudan’s North Darfur region that houses half a million people displaced from the ongoing civil war. The war that broke out last April between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) sparked a hunger crisis with some 25 million people, about half of the Sudanese population, facing acute hunger. International experts used set criteria to confirm famine in Zamzam and added that there is a high risk that these conditions will continue beyond October if the conflict persists. To comprehend why experts are concerned about the spread of famine in Sudan, it’s important to understand how rare famine is, how it is determined, who officially declares it, and how war exacerbates it.

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