On Wednesday, World Food Program (WFP) Executive Director Cindy McCain warned that the war in Sudan, which has shattered millions of lives and created the largest displacement crisis, risks triggering the world's largest hunger crisis.
Over 25 million people across Sudan, South Sudan, and Chad are trapped in a spiral of deteriorating food security, said McCain, who just concluded a visit to South Sudan, where she met families fleeing violence and an escalating hunger emergency in Sudan.
"The consequences of inaction go far beyond a mother unable to feed her child and will shape the region for years to come," she said in a statement issued in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.
"Today, I am making an urgent plea for the fighting to stop, and that all humanitarian agencies must be allowed to do their life-saving work," McCain said. She said 20 years ago, Darfur was the world's largest hunger crisis and the world rallied to respond. "But today, the people of Sudan have been forgotten. Millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake."
The WFP said it is unable to get sufficient emergency food assistance to desperate communities in Sudan who are trapped by fighting because of the relentless violence and interference by the warring parties.
Right now, 90 percent of people facing emergency levels of hunger in Sudan are stuck in areas that are largely inaccessible to the WFP, it said.
According to the United Nations agency, humanitarian assistance has been further disrupted after authorities revoked permissions for cross-border truck convoys, forcing the WFP to halt its operations from Chad into Darfur. More people flee into South Sudan and Chad, and the humanitarian response is at breaking point.
McCain said she traveled to Renk, in eastern South Sudan, where almost 600,000 people have crossed from Sudan in the last 10 months.
She said newly arrived displaced people in South Sudan make up 35 percent of those facing catastrophic levels of hunger -- the highest possible level -- despite them accounting for less than 3 percent of the population.
One in five children at the transit centers at the main border crossing is malnourished, noting that with current resources, McCain said, noting that the WFP is struggling to keep pace with the significant level of need.
"I met mothers and children who have fled for their lives not once, but multiple times, and now hunger is closing in on them," she said.