Wednesday was a stark anniversary in Sudan: three years since fighting erupted between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, igniting a war that has led to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
“This grim and chastening anniversary marks another year when the world has failed to meet the test of Sudan,” Tom Fletcher, emergency relief coordinator at the United Nations, said in a statement before a conference in Berlin on Wednesday to raise aid funds and call attention to the brutal conflict.
“Sudan is an atrocities laboratory: sieges, denial of food, weaponized sexual violence,” Mr. Fletcher said at the conference.
And as the fighting enters its fourth year, the widespread displacement, violence and hunger it has brought remain overshadowed by wars elsewhere.
Beyond that, the American-Israeli war on Iran has led to rising global fuel and fertilizer prices, Mr. Fletcher noted, compounding the severe food crisis in Sudan.
A report this month by the Norwegian Refugee Council and other aid groups said the violence had “systematically eroded Sudan’s food system — field by field, road by road, market by market — producing mass hunger.”
About 14 million people have been forced from their homes by the fighting, and some farmers have had to abandon their fields amid the war. At the same time, seed stocks have been destroyed, looted or otherwise depleted, while agricultural services have disappeared in many areas. The harsh farming conditions have led to a spike in the prices of food and agricultural supplies while incomes have plummeted to lows not seen in decades.
Before the war, about two-thirds of the people in Sudan relied on agriculture and related activities for their livelihoods and to supplement their own food supplies. Now, much of the population of about 50 million is not getting enough to eat, aid groups say. More than 10 million people are experiencing severe and extreme levels of food insecurity, and nearly 20 million more are struggling with shortages and acute food insecurity.
In the two areas hit hardest by the conflict — North Darfur and South Kordofan — millions of people get only one meal a day, if that, and often miss meals for days, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council report. Some people resort to eating leaves and animal feed to survive, and child malnutrition is spiking as a result, it said.
Aid agencies and the United Nations consider the crisis in Sudan to be the world’s worst, based on hunger and displacement.
“Hunger and violence are reinforcing each other in a vicious cycle of desperation,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program, said in a statement from Sudan on Tuesday. Making matters worse are the increased global fuel and fertilizer costs linked to instability in the Middle East, Ross Smith, who heads emergency preparedness at the organization, said in a separate statement.
Rising fuel prices “will have a knock-on effect on all the prices of all staple goods and food commodities, pushing more people into hunger,” Mr. Smith warned on Tuesday.
Sudan’s warring parties were once close allies. The leaders of the military and the Rapid Support Forces seized power in a coup in 2021, only to later fall out before going to war in April 2023.
They show no signs of coming together again, not even to discuss a potential truce. Their war is partly funded by the production and trade of gold, which lies in rich deposits across Sudan and has actually surpassed prewar levels, even as the population struggles to survive worsening conditions.
Foreign powers have fueled the fight by supplying weapons to both sides, with the strongest criticism leveled at the United Arab Emirates, which has been widely accused of backing the R.S.F. The Emirates denies it backs either side.
The war has destroyed Sudan’s economy, collapsed its health system, prompted widespread violence against women, brought the deaths of thousands of children, and left many of the young without schools to attend, threatening the country’s future. The country’s health ministry puts the civilian death toll at more than 11,000, while some estimates are as high as around 400,000.
The Rapid Support Forces and associated Arab militias have carried out ethnically targeted killings that the U.S. government has deemed to be genocide, and over the course of the war the United States has accused both sides of war crimes. After the city of El Fasher was overrun by the R.S.F. last fall, the United Nations also accused its fighters of genocide.
More than 4,300 children have been killed or maimed since the war began and at least 245 were killed in the first three months of the year, according to UNICEF, the vast majority from drone attacks. The true toll is probably far higher, UNICEF noted, but insecurity and limited access have impeded sustained monitoring and verification.
The United States committed $200 million in funding for Sudan in February and participated in the conference in Germany on Wednesday. Pledges of $1.53 billion were made at the conference, the German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, said.
“But let’s be clear: funding alone cannot substitute for peace,” the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, told conference attendees via video. “An immediate cessation of hostilities is essential.”
Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering breaking news around the world. She is based in Washington.
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