CAIRO: The Sudanese government on Sunday rejected a report backed by the United Nations which said that famine had spread to five areas of the war-hit African country.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) in an assessment last week said that the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had caused famine-like conditions for 638,000 people, with a further 8.1 million on the brink of starvation.
The foreign ministry in a statement categorically rejected the IPC’s description of the situation in Sudan as a famine. The statement termed the report highly speculative and accused the IPC of procedural and transparency failings.
It said IPC did not have access to updated data and had not consulted with the government’s technical team before publication of the final version of the report.
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The government in Sudan, loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, has been based in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan since the capital Khartoum became a war area in April 2023.
It has repeatedly been accused of obstructing global efforts to assess the food security situation in the war-hit nation.
The authorities have also been accused of causing bureaucratic hurdles to humanitarian work and blocking visas for foreign aid teams.
The International Rescue Committee said the army was “leveraging its status as the internationally recognized government (and blocking) the UN and other agencies from reaching RSF-controlled areas.”
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The army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.
The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced over 12 million people. Across the country, more than 24.6 million people face high levels of acute shortage of food.
