Nearly 29 million people in Sudan are facing acute food shortages as the country’s civil war enters its third year, with millions of families reduced to eating a single meal per day and many going entire days without food, according to a joint report by five major international NGOs published on April 13.

The report, authored by Action Against Hunger, CARE International, the International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, and the Norwegian Refugee Council, describes a food system that has been methodically dismantled by conflict. Farms destroyed. Roads cut. Markets razed.

The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began in April 2023. What was expected to be a short-lived power struggle has ground on for three years, producing what the coalition describes as one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

The Scale of Hunger

A substantial majority of Sudan’s population is now facing acute food insecurity, according to the 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan. That figure is staggering on its own. But the texture of what it means for individual families is worse than any single number can communicate.

In North Darfur and South Kordofan, the two regions hit hardest by fighting, millions of families can access only one meal per day. The NGO coalition’s report, based on interviews with farmers, traders, and humanitarian workers inside Sudan, found that people regularly miss meals for entire days. Some have resorted to eating leaves and animal feed to survive.

Communal kitchens, set up to collectively prepare and share whatever food is available, are increasingly unable to meet rising demand as resources dwindle. Major donor funding cuts have further eroded aid agencies’ capacity to respond.

Famine Confirmed in Four Locations

The Sudanese government, aligned with the army, denies that famine conditions exist in the country. The RSF denies responsibility for conditions in areas it controls. But the data from international monitoring bodies tells a different story.

International hunger monitors have confirmed famine conditions in el-Fasher and Kadugli. Subsequently, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification found that famine thresholds for acute malnutrition had been surpassed in Um Baru and Kernoi, with the rate of acutely malnourished children under five in Um Baru reaching nearly double the famine threshold.

That phrase bears repeating: nearly double. These are not borderline cases.

The IPC classification system exists precisely for situations like this, to provide an independent, evidence-based assessment when governments and warring parties have every incentive to deny what is happening. Four confirmed famine locations across Sudan suggest a pattern, not an anomaly.

Starvation as a Weapon

The NGO report describes the hunger crisis not as a byproduct of war but as one of its instruments. Farms have been deliberately destroyed. Markets have been targeted. Supply routes have been severed. The language of the report is direct and specific.

According to humanitarian reports, nearly three years of conflict involving violence, displacement and siege tactics have systematically eroded Sudan’s food system, producing mass hunger.

The use of starvation as a deliberate tactic in armed conflict is a violation of international humanitarian law. Yet accountability mechanisms for such violations have been largely absent in Sudan’s war. The United Nations has documented widespread atrocities and waves of ethnically charged violence, but the international response has remained fragmented.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed over the past three years. Aid groups say the actual death toll could be many times higher, given the collapse of medical infrastructure and the inability to count the dead in areas cut off by fighting.

Displacement on a Massive Scale

The war has forced millions of people from their homes. Virtually the entire population of the country is now in need of some form of humanitarian assistance.

The International Rescue Committee has ranked Sudan at the top of its 2026 Emergency Watchlist for the third consecutive year, calling the country the most likely in the world to experience a deteriorating humanitarian crisis. The IRC has reported that the conflict has resulted in a death toll significantly higher than UN confirmed figures and is preventing lifesaving aid from reaching communities in need.

Displacement at this scale does not just move people from one location to another. It severs them from the networks, land, and markets that made survival possible. Displaced farmers cannot plant. Displaced traders cannot sell. Displaced families become dependent on aid that is not arriving in sufficient quantities.

For those tracking the broader contours of this crisis, disabled populations in Sudan face the steepest barriers to survival, a dimension of the crisis that rarely receives adequate attention.

Women and Girls Pay the Highest Price

The gendered dimensions of Sudan’s food crisis are severe. The NGO report found that women and girls face a high risk of rape and harassment when they go to fields, visit markets, or collect water. In a situation where simply obtaining food requires leaving relative safety, the act of trying to eat becomes a direct exposure to sexual violence.

Female-headed households are significantly more likely to experience food shortages than male-headed households. This disparity reflects not just the economics of gender in Sudan but the way armed conflict weaponizes existing vulnerabilities. Women who have lost male family members to the fighting, or whose husbands have been displaced or killed, are left to feed their families in conditions where doing so puts them at extraordinary physical risk.

This is a feedback loop with no easy exit. Food insecurity forces women into dangerous situations. Dangerous situations lead to trauma that compounds the difficulty of securing food. And the cycle repeats.

What the Denial Means

The Sudanese government’s refusal to acknowledge famine conditions has material consequences. Famine declarations trigger specific international response protocols and can unlock additional funding. When a government denies famine, it delays and complicates the international community’s ability to mount a proportionate response. It also provides political cover for inaction.

Both sides in this war have reasons to obscure the truth. The army-aligned government does not want to admit that its military operations have produced famine. The RSF does not want to accept responsibility for conditions in territories it holds. Meanwhile, the economic collapse deepening across Sudan and the compounding effects of climate change are making the crisis worse regardless of who controls which territory.

The war in Sudan has produced one of those catastrophes that is both enormous and nearly invisible outside the region. The numbers should demand attention: millions of people food insecure, millions displaced, famine confirmed in four locations, children malnourished at double the crisis threshold.

But Sudan has no ceasefire deal attracting global media coverage. It has no geopolitical rivalry between major powers driving diplomatic engagement. It has a civil war grinding through its third year, and millions of people trying to survive on one meal a day.

Sometimes less than that.

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