UN food agency pauses aid to famine-hit Sudan displacement camp of half a million people

The United Nations’ food agency says it has paused aid distribution in Sudan’s famine-hit Zamzam displacement camp of a half-million people as fighting intensifies between the country’s warring sides, and it warns that thousands could now starve.

The World Food Program said Wednesday that fighting in the past two weeks between the military and a paramilitary group in Sudan’s civil war has forced its partners to leave the camp in western Darfur for safety.

“Without immediate assistance, thousands of desperate families in Zamzam could starve in the coming weeks,” said the agency’s regional director, Laurent Bukera.

Bukera urged the warring sides to stop fighting and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid. “We must resume the delivery of life-saving aid in and around Zamzam safely, quickly and at scale,” she said.

WFP has been feeding about 300,000 camp residents, but it and partners reached only 60,000 people this month amid intensified shelling. One attack destroyed the camp’s central open market, pushing residents farther from essential food and supplies, the agency said.

Earlier this week, the Doctors Without Borders medical charity said it paused its operations, including its field hospital, in the camp due to intensified attacks.

Famine is declared when, among other things, two adults or four children for every 10,000 people are dying each day from starvation or malnutrition combined with disease.

Famine was announced in the Zamzam camp in August and spread to two other camps for displaced people in Darfur and the Western Nuba Mountains.

Since then, WFP said it managed to deliver only one convoy of humanitarian supplies into the camp. It blamed road conditions during the rainy season, fighting and “purposeful obstruction” by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, or RSF.

The camp is 12 kilometers (6.5 miles) south of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, which the RSF has been trying for months to take.

The RSF has been at war with the Sudanese military since April 2023. The conflict has been marked by atrocities including ethnically motivated killing and rape, according to the U.N. and rights groups. The International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Aid groups have made pleas for access for months in Zamzam and elsewhere, with little success. The U.N.’s top humanitarian official in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, has accused the RSF of preventing life-saving aid from reaching many in Darfur. The RSF and allied militias control most of that region.