At Least 750,000 on Brink of Starvation and Death in Sudan, Experts Warn

At least 750,000 people are on the brink of starvation and death in Sudan, where a devastating civil war has left over half the country’s 48 million people in a situation of chronic hunger, the global authority on famine said on Thursday.

At least 14 areas across the country are near famine, including some in the capital, Khartoum, according to the latest figures from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a group of experts from U.N. bodies and major relief agencies that measures hunger and formally declares famine.

The dire update appeared to confirm warnings from aid experts that Sudan is hurtling toward a humanitarian disaster on a scale not seen in decades.

“This is possibly the crisis of a generation,” said Edouard Rodier, Europe director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, who was in western Sudan last week. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

In a report issued on Thursday, the group said that 25.6 million Sudanese, or over half the population, were in a food crisis. Of them, 8.5 million are acutely malnourished or scrambling to survive while 755,000 are in a “catastrophe” — essentially, famine conditions.

When the group, known as the I.P.C., last issued estimates for Sudan in December, the number of people facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity was zero. The latest figures exceed even those of Gaza, where the group said on Tuesday that 495,000 people were in the same situation.