A network of community kitchens in Sudan – a crucial lifeline for millions of people caught up in the civil war – is on the verge of collapse, a report says.
The warning from aid organisation Islamic Relief comes after a UN-backed global hunger monitor confirmed that famine conditions were spreading in conflict zones.
The locally run kitchens have operated in areas that are difficult for international humanitarian groups to access, but are facing closure due to neglect, shortages and volunteer exhaustion.
Sudan’s people have been brutalised by more than two years of war after fighting broke out between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
It has created what the UN has called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with estimates that more than 24 million people are facing acute food shortages.
Most of the kitchens “will close if nothing changes in six months, with maybe one or two surviving in each area”, one volunteer is quoted by the Islamic Relief report as saying.
These local initiatives often operate alongside social networks known as Emergency Response Rooms that have filled the gaps of collapsing government services and limited international aid.
Everyone from teachers to engineers to young people pitch in.
Financial fragility is the most pressing issue the kitchens face. They are now funded mainly by the Sudanese diaspora, after the USAID cuts earlier this year.
“It was like someone cut a rope we were holding on to,” one volunteer said.
“Before March, we had a small, regular stream that let us plan. We knew we could serve at least one meal a day. Now? In the last month, I would say there were 10 days we went to sleep not knowing if we could cook the next day. The uncertainty, it’s worse than having nothing.”
There are severe operational challenges, such as the lack of safe water and firewood.
Aid agencies say both sides obstruct deliveries with bureaucratic delays and denials. To make matters worse, there are often market disruptions due to blockades, insecurity and looting.
The situation is worst in the besieged cities of el-Fasher in the western Darfur region and Kadugli in South Kordofan state. Both are largely cut off from commercial supplies and humanitarian assistance.
The latest report of the global food security monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase network (IPC), confirmed famine conditions in those cities and projected a risk of famine in 20 additional areas across greater Darfur and greater Kordofan.
In el-Fasher, the kitchens were reduced to serving animal fodder by the time the city finally fell to the RSF last week.
