Volunteers warn of famine across six West Kordofan localities as rains fail

The Dar Hamar Emergency Room, a volunteer-led aid network, issued a statement on Saturday 12 September warning of “imminent famine” across six localities in West Kordofan — Wad Banda, El Nuhud, Ghebeish, Abu Zabad, Al Odaiya and Al Khiwai — after poor rainfall, damaged harvests and rising food prices. “We are sounding the alarm and warning of a humanitarian disaster and certain famine engulfing all northern localities,” the statement said, as carried by Daily Trust. The areas are largely under RSF control; the network reports widespread looting and destruction of livelihoods, disrupted transport, medicine shortages and a cholera outbreak, and says accusations of abuses by RSF fighters have pushed thousands to flee toward North Kordofan. Families in Al-Odaya were reported to have resorted to eating umbaz, the residue left after oilseeds are pressed, normally used as animal feed. That detail is second-hand within a single reporting chain and should be read as such.

This is one volunteer network’s account, originated by Sudan Tribune and picked up by The New Arab on 13 September. “Imminent famine” here is advocacy language, not a determination: the IPC has issued no classification for these six localities. What is on the record is the June IPC Special Report, which projected the population in Phase 5 (Catastrophe) rising from 135,000 to around 200,000 between June and September across North Darfur, South Darfur, South Kordofan and West Kordofan, and detected Risk of Famine in 14 areas. The same round put roughly 19.5 million people — about 41 percent of Sudan’s population — in Phase 3 or above between February and May. FEWS NET’s March update kept a risk of Famine over South Kordofan and North Darfur, flagging Kadugli, Dilling and the western Nuba Mountains.

Assessment: The important line in this file is not the word famine, it is the word rain. Sudan Tribune reported from Gedaref on 31 July that prolonged dry spells had left soil uncultivable nearly two months into the rainy season in the country’s primary grain state — farmer Osman Abakar on the record: “The delay in rains has completely upended our farming schedules.” A failed 2026 Gedaref harvest does not stay in Gedaref; it prices food in markets from Kordofan to the Red Sea, and it degrades the one variable neither belligerent controls. Aid systems are built to model siege and displacement. They are slower to model a bad season arriving underneath a war, and the IPC itself warns the true scale exceeds what it can measure.