CAIRO (Reuters) -Sudan on Sunday denied the existence of famine in North Darfur’s Zamzam camp for internally displaced people, while an aid group said there was a risk of a severe shortage of special food designed to treat malnourished children in the camp.
On Thursday, a global food monitor found that famine, confirmed when acute malnutrition and mortality criteria are met, was present in the Zamzam camp and likely to persist there at least until October.
Experts and U.N. officials say a famine classification could trigger a U.N. Security Council resolution empowering agencies to deliver relief across borders to the most needy, yet Sudanese officials have said that a famine declaration could be a pretext for international intervention in the country.
More than 15 months of war in Sudan between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have created the world’s biggest internal displacement crisis and left 25 million people – or half the population – in urgent need of humanitarian aid.
Aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said earlier this year that a child died every two hours in the camp, which holds half a million people. On Sunday it said in a post on X: “Our teams only have enough therapeutic food to treat malnourished children in Zamzam camp, Sudan, for another two weeks.”
But Sudan’s Federal Humanitarian Aid Commission, a governmental body, said on Sunday that talk of famine was inaccurate and conditions were “not consistent” with those that must be met to declare famine.
The Sudanese government blamed the RSF for imposing what it said was a blockade on al-Fashir, capital of North Darfur, that led to shortages in food and aid. Al-Fashir is the only significant holdout from the RSF across Darfur.
The RSF on Friday declared “full solidarity” with victims of the famine and repeated an offer to work with the United Nations to facilitate delivery of aid.
(Reporting by Hatem Maher and Nafisa Eltahir; Writing by Adam Makary; Editing by Jane Merriman and David Holmes)
