Issue No. 89

Sudan’s ‘Starvation Warfare’ – Why The World Must Act

 As Sudan experiences its third lean season since the start of the civil war, the humanitarian crisis continues to rapidly deteriorate. First officially declared in August 2024, famine continues to sweep across the country as fighting intensifies in Darfur and Kordofan. The latest UN Integrated Food Security Phase Classification update warns that Phase 5 (Famine) could spread to 17 additional areas, with 8.5 million people in Phase 4 (Emergency) and over 756,000 in Phase 5 (Famine). The scale of hunger is unprecedented in Sudan’s history, with nearly half of Sudan’s 50 million people now acutely food insecure and 637,000 facing “catastrophic” hunger – the highest figure globally, according to WFP. This is not just a by-product of war, but a deliberate tactic used to weaken and manipulate vulnerable populations. Both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have weaponised starvation through systematic obstruction, looting, and destruction of food systems.

 The history of famine and its weaponisation in Sudan is hard to ignore. Over the past century, modern-day Sudan has experienced some of the most devastating food crises in Africa – not as isolated natural disasters, but as part of a repeating cycle where environmental shock, state neglect, war, and looting all play a role. The earliest recorded famine between 1888 and 1892 – known as sanat sitta (“the six years”) – ravaged Darfur and western Kordofan under the Mahdist regime. Under Anglo-Egyptian rule and later after independence, famines have remained frequent and increasingly politicised. In the mid-1980s, a Sahel-wide drought triggered widespread hunger across Darfur and Kordofan, with the government diverting resources from famine response in Darfur to counter rural insurgencies, using food as leverage. Dubbed the “Reagan famine” due to the scale of US relief, it killed an estimated 240,000 people. The 1998 Bahr al-Ghazal famine, which claimed up to a quarter of a million lives, was precipitated not only by drought, but also by violent raids and looting by government-backed muraheleen militias targeting Dinka communities. During the second civil war (1983–2005), government forces employed scorched-earth tactics and blocked humanitarian access, turning food crises into full-blown famine. In the 2000s, Darfur once again became the epicentre of crisis, as government-backed Janjaweed militias used starvation as a weapon – burning crops, poisoning wells, and stealing livestock to depopulate rural areas and force displacement.

The weaponisation of famine and humanitarian aid has become one of the most chilling features of Sudan’s ongoing conflict. Far from being a tragic consequence of war, hunger is increasingly being deployed as a deliberate tool of warfare by both actors. The SAF has imposed opaque, ever-shifting bureaucratic restrictions to delay or deny access to RSF-held territories, where the vast majority of the most food-insecure populations reside. The RSF on the other hand, has engaged in open looting – attacking convoys, extorting bribes at checkpoints, shelling displacement camps, and targeting relief workers. Since April 2023, the RSF has looted over 220 NGO vehicles and killed or detained dozens of humanitarian staff. Humanitarian corridors have become either impassable or lethally dangerous. On 2 June, an airstrike hit a 15-truck UN-backed convoy en route to El Fasher – its first aid delivery in over a year – killing five people and destroying vital food supplies. Even when permission is granted on paper, aid rarely reaches its intended destination as administrative sabotage by the SAF or checkpoint extortions by the RSF, or fighting between both, routinely derail operations. Despite vocal condemnation from the UN and African Union, neither side has faced meaningful accountability. Starvation warfare, banned under international law, is now central to Sudan’s battlefield strategy.

As aid efforts falter under the weight of the conflict, citizen-led Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) have stepped into the vacuum. These grassroots organisations evolved from neighbourhood resistance committees that led the 2019 revolution, shifting from political activism to humanitarian action and, within days of the war’s outbreak in April 2023,began mobilising. From soup kitchens, triage units, evacuation networks and psychosocial support hubs, ERRs have become the backbone of Sudan’s humanitarian response, earning them nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2024. Initially funded through diaspora remittances and local donations, international agencies also began directly supporting them, recognising the ERRs’ unparalleled access to isolated communities. By late 2024, USAID was directly supporting hundreds of ERRs and over 1100 community kitchens with funding, logistics, and coordination. Their decentralised, nonpartisan structure has allowed them to operate across ethnic and political lines, but this has not been without cost – since April 2023, more than 60 ERR volunteers have been killed, many others detained or tortured, and several hubs destroyed in shelling. In February 2025, an 83% cut to USAID funding under the Trump administration forced the closure of thousands of kitchens and health services.

As famine spreads, war profiteers extract value from the collapse, creating a brutal political economy in which inflicting suffering is profitable. In most famines, livestock prices plummet as families sell animals to survive. In Sudan, they have remained stable – even risen – despite mass hunger. In a bitter irony, livestock trade often moves more freely than humanitarian supplies, protected by the same armed actors who block relief efforts. Merchant-soldier cartels, backed by or embedded within the SAF and RSF, have seized control of the trade. They acquire herds at fire-sale prices or through theft, then export them to Gulf markets – in 2023 alone, Sudan exported nearly over USD 400 million in livestock, even as famine loomed over vast swathes of the country. The RSF and SAF dominate these trade routes, imposing checkpoint fees, licences, and extortion. As pastoralist communities are displaced and lose access to their herds, armed actors reap profits from these assets that civilians need to survive.

This extractive economy extends far beyond livestock. Land, grain, and gold underpin a militarised marketplace in which violence secures control. Once Africa’s breadbasket, vast irrigation schemes like the Gezira Scheme – formerly among the largest in the world – supported domestic food security. Decades of mismanagement and environmental degradation already eroded capacity before the war. In Sudan’s eastern regions – Gedaref, Kassala, and the Red Sea – Gulf investors have acquired vast swathes of arable land, displacing local communities and driving up land prices. As rural families are pushed off their farms, foreign buyers gain privileged access to Sudan’s most productive lands at discounted rates – often in collusion with political and military elites.

The psychological effects of famine are devastating and inflict trauma that may take generations to heal. Hunger forces impossible choices that fracture relationships and erode social and moral ties. Communities that once depended on each other for support are now driven to prioritise survival over all else. What were once unthinkable actions – like hoarding food or turning away family – become necessary, and result in a deep sense of guilt and shame. Trust is shattered and communities are broken down, pushing them into moral freefall. According to UNICEF, over 3.2 million children under five will be severely malnourished in 2025, with 770,000 of them suffering the most extreme form. The collapse of education isn’t just a loss of learning, but also a loss of hope, and this sense of abandonment may prove to be famine’s most enduring legacy.

Where famine is not only a tragic consequence of conflict but a weapon of war, deployed with intent by calculated decisions of armed actors who treat humanitarian access as a frontline, addressing Sudan’s crisis will require more than relief assistance. Starvation is being used as a strategy, not a symptom, and yet the international response has remained paralysed and often symbolic – reports, condemnation, and facile praise for local ‘resilience’ cannot substitute for the hard choices that must now be made. There is little indication that the warring factions can achieve a decisive military victory making it clear that no sustainable political solution can be built on current military dynamics. Any meaningful peace process must prioritise transitional justice and a long-term investment in the reconstruction of the social fabric. Without this, any postwar settlement risks becoming the foundation for renewed conflict. The cost of continued inaction will be measured not just in statistics but in the destruction of an entire civilisation. 

The Horn Edition Team