The IPC warns famine risk is rising in Darfur and Kordofan, then says it cannot classify

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification issued a Food Insecurity and Malnutrition Alert on Monday 12 October, warning of growing famine risk across parts of Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan, driven by conflict, mass displacement, severe drought and inadequate humanitarian funding. “An El Nino-induced drought, affecting roughly half of the country, is compounding the impacts of conflict and displacement, reducing food availability, driving up prices and affecting livelihoods,” the IPC said in text carried by Al Jazeera. Roughly two-thirds of cropland in North Darfur showed poor vegetation growth, and about half in South Darfur, West Kordofan and South Kordofan. UN News reported that the Sudan humanitarian appeal was less than half funded as of 8 October. WFP Acting Executive Director Carl Skau, after visiting Khartoum, El Obeid, El Fasher and Tawila in mid-September, put 20 million people in acute hunger and 200,000 at IPC Phase 5, catastrophe, in figures summarised by Security Council Report.

The qualification carried in the same UN News account is the part most often lost in transmission: the IPC’s Famine Review Committee said there is not enough survey data for a full analysis, and that the available evidence points to deterioration rather than establishing a classification. This is an alert, not a famine declaration. The International Rescue Committee, in a Khartoum press release on 13 October, said more than 300,000 people had been displaced across Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan “since October” — a baseline the release does not pin down, and which this desk reads as most likely dating to the fall of El Fasher a year ago rather than to the past three weeks.

Assessment: The missing survey data is not a technical footnote; it is a product of the same war the Geneva meeting is convened to coordinate about. Famine classification requires enumerators moving through territory controlled by two belligerents who have shown no interest in granting them passage, which means the formal threshold may well be crossed before anyone can certify it. Two cautions for readers of Sudan coverage this month. Treat “famine risk rising” and “famine declared” as different statements. And date-stamp every hunger figure: Human Rights Watch’s widely recycled 24.6 million and 11.8 million displaced are as of September 2025, not now.