Twenty months after the outbreak of fighting, the Sudan is seeing humanitarian disaster on an almost immeasurable scale. In its latest report, published on 24 December, the Famine Review Committee, an international expert panel, states that the famine in the Sudan is worsening dramatically.

Current data shows that more than 24.6 million people are suffering hunger, of whom over 8.1 million are confronted with extreme food insecurity, including many with acute malnutrition. 573,000 people are on the verge of starvation. The Famine Review Committee said back in August that parts of North Darfur were experiencing the world’s first famine in seven years. It is profoundly shocking that the hunger crisis in the Sudan has spread even further since then.

This disaster is entirely human-induced. The Famine Review Committee has for months pointed to two reasons for the famine: the ongoing fighting and the refusal of the parties to the conflict to allow humanitarian access. Both sides are using hunger as an instrument of war, accepting the possibility that many people might starve to death. Stopping cooperation with the mechanisms of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) designed to monitor food supplies, as announced by the Sudanese authorities on 25 December, is not the right way to tackle the crisis.

We urgently appeal to the parties to the conflict, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), to allow comprehensive access for all humanitarian organisations at last, and to support and protect their life-saving work, rather than impeding or even preventing it altogether. We call on both sides to respect international humanitarian law and at long last to silence their weapons. That is the only way to end the famine in the Sudan.

Together with our partners, we will continue to do our utmost to provide the people in the Sudan and its neighbouring states with the basic necessities through humanitarian assistance and to ensure humanitarian access through humanitarian diplomacy.