Sudan: 38% acute malnutrition in a Jebel Marra camp, IPC warns of Darfur and Kordofan

Two displacement camps in eastern Jebel Marra, in South Darfur, are recording acute malnutrition rates of 38% and 30.8% among children, which is above the threshold used to define a famine. This is the finding of an alert from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), published on October 12, 2026, and relayed by the United Nations news service. Its Famine Review Committee describes a "humanitarian catastrophe, already of historic proportions."

Thirteen out of seventeen nutritional surveys in critical zones

Across Greater Darfur, 13 of the 17 nutritional surveys conducted since January 2026 reveal critical levels, according to the IPC. In Nyala, the proportion of children requiring treatment for severe acute malnutrition rose from 5% to 11% between January and August 2026. The committee acknowledges that it does not have enough survey data for a formal classification, but believes that all indicators point toward rapid deterioration.

In Kordofan, even markets are being targeted

Greater Kordofan is presented as the epicenter of the conflict. More than 300,000 people have been displaced there since October 2025, and markets have been subjected to more than 170 airstrikes, lootings, or clashes since the beginning of the year. On October 2 and 3, 2026, two World Food Programme trucks came under fire, killing at least one person. When markets and convoys become targets, it is no longer just the harvest that is missing: it is access to food that is being destroyed.

Drought on top of war

Drought, linked to El Niño, is affecting more than half of Sudan. In North Darfur, 64% of cultivated land shows poor vegetation growth, according to the IPC. The rains that arrived at the end of September 2026 are considered too late to save most of the crops, and prices are expected to continue to climb. Two shocks are therefore overlapping for the same families: the climate, which they did not cause, and a war waged in their name by factions fighting over the country.

Treatment that does not arrive

In August 2026, only 26% of the children expected to receive care for severe acute malnutrition with complications actually received it. Without treatment, up to two-thirds of them could die, the alert reminds us. As of October 8, 2026, less than half of the humanitarian appeal for Sudan was funded.

The IPC makes three demands: an end to the fighting, safe and sustainable humanitarian access, particularly in North and West Kordofan, and the mobilization of large-scale flexible funding. The first two do not depend on any foreign donor: they are the responsibility of the Sudanese belligerents and the pressure that continental institutions, including the African Union, agree to exert on them. The third reminds us that an appeal that is half-funded is not a budgetary inevitability, but a political choice made elsewhere.