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Sudan’s civil war has plunged a camp for some 500,000 displaced people near the besieged Darfur city of El Fasher into famine, an independent panel of food security experts says.
After studying the new data, the Famine Review Commission (FRC) concluded that 16 months of conflict and restrictions on aid deliveries were to blame for the famine.
“The devastation caused by the escalating violence in El Fasher is profound and distressing,” the statement said, explaining why the population of Zam Zam refugee camp has swelled since April.
The war, a power struggle between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, forcing 10 million people to flee their homes.
The US-brokered talks, due to begin in two weeks, now appear to be in jeopardy.
The RSF has accepted the invitation to Geneva, but it is not clear whether the army will go there after Wednesday’s meeting. Alleged assassination attempt on military leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
“The main causes of famine in Zam Zam camp are conflict and lack of humanitarian aid, both of which can be immediately corrected if the necessary political will exists.” FRC means.
The committee, which is linked to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global initiative by UN agencies, aid organizations and governments to identify famine situations, analysed two reports:
Fews Net said Abu Shouk and Salam refugee camps, also near El Fasher, may also be experiencing famine, but there was not enough evidence to conclude that definitively.
To classify an area as famine-affected, at least 20 percent of households must face extreme food shortages, 30 percent of children must be severely malnourished, and two people per 10,000 people must die every day from hunger or malnutrition and disease.
Since April, the Rapid Support Forces have been trying to capture El Fasher from government forces, the only city in western Darfur still under military control.
According to the FRC, approximately 320,000 people fled the city, including an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 who moved to the Zamzam refugee camp in just a few weeks in May “in search of safety, basic services and food.”
That month, UN genocide prevention experts said many civilians in El Fasher were being targeted because of their ethnicity and warned that the risk of genocide was growing.
The violence in Darfur is similar to the ethnic cleansing waged by Arab Janjaweed militias against non-Arab communities two decades ago.
The main market in Zam Zam camp is now open only sporadically, but prices have risen sharply by June, with cooking oil up 63 percent, sugar up 190 percent, millet up 67 percent and rice up 75 percent, the FRC said. The FRC gave a brief overview of conditions in the crowded camp in its 47-page report.
Famine conditions continued through June and July and were likely to continue until October, the harvest season.
However, experts fear there will not be much relief for the hunger crisis as the war has prevented many farmers from planting.
Barrett Alexander of aid agency Mercies International warned that the dire situation revealed by reports from El Fasher, and particularly from the Zam Zam refugee camp, was “just the tip of the iceberg”.
“From our experience with previous famines, we know that by the time a famine is officially declared, mass death has already occurred.”
He added that recent assessments by international charities in Central and South Darfur showed that nine out of 10 children suffered from life-threatening malnutrition.
Doctors Without Borders, one of the last aid groups operating in El Fasher, said the situation was likely to get worse if the blockade on humanitarian access was not urgently lifted.
“Our trucks left N’Djamena, Chad, more than six weeks ago and should have arrived in El Fasher by now, but we don’t know when they will be allowed to leave,” said Stéphane Doyon, head of MSF’s emergency response program in Sudan.
Both warring parties have been accused of obstructing and looting aid, charges that both sides deny.
MSF trucks are delivering therapeutic food and medical supplies to children in Zam Zam camp, and surgical supplies to the last hospital in El Fasher that can perform operations.
The Saudi hospital was shelled on Monday, killing three staff members and injuring at least 25 people – the 10th attack in three months, the charity said.
“We don’t know if the hospital was deliberately attacked, but Monday’s events show that the warring parties did not take any precautions to protect the hospital,” Dogon said.
Additional reporting by the BBC’s Anne Soy.
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