Nairobi, September 4 — Sudan is experiencing a starvation crisis of historic proportions, the heads of multiple refugee councils said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The silence is deafening. People are dying of hunger, every day, and yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions,” the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Danish Refugee Council, and Mercy Corp said.
More than 25 million people, over half the population, are suffering acute food insecurity. Many families have been living on one meal a day and been forced to eat tree leaves and insects. Food production in the company has been destroyed due to fighting, and more than 90 percent of factories in Sudan have ceased to operate.
In a report released on Monday, the refugee councils said that the full extent of the starvation crisis is hidden due to the lack of sufficient data, particularly in Darfur, Kordofan and Khartoum.
The report also argued that the humanitarian response so far has “been grossly inaccurate.” The response plan is currently only funded at 41 percent, “an unacceptable gap as starvation continues to spread and claim lives,” the councils said.