A Sudanese politician says both armies are hiding a famine the IPC still cannot formally declare

Yasir Arman, identified by Sudan Tribune as leader of the RDC, said in a statement published on 12 November that both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces are actively concealing an unfolding famine while bearing responsibility for it. This is a claim by a political actor, single-sourced to his own statement, and Arman is not a neutral party: he is a civilian-political opponent of both belligerents and the accusation builds a case for external pressure on each. Set it against the formal record. The IPC’s alert of 12 October identified 14 areas in North Darfur, South Darfur and South Kordofan as at risk of famine, with roughly five million people in emergency-level hunger, and recorded global acute malnutrition above famine thresholds in two displacement camps in South Darfur. No area in Sudan is currently classified as Famine.

The gap is not necessarily a contradiction. The IPC’s Famine Review Committee stated there is not enough survey data for a full analysis, while assessing that the available evidence points to a rapidly worsening situation — the mechanism by which a famine can be real and unclassified at the same time. The IPC also noted that “an El Niño-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.” G7 foreign ministers meeting in Paris on 9–10 November said they were alarmed by “the growing risk of famine in parts of Darfur and Kordofan,” demanded both forces guarantee rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access, and called on them to “engage in negotiations including with the Quad with a view to reaching a permanent ceasefire.” The declaration warns against external actors fuelling the conflict. It names none of them.

Assessment: Both things can be true: Arman is running ahead of the evidence, and the evidence is missing because the two forces he is accusing control access to the places where it would be gathered. A desk that writes “no famine declared” without writing why has mis-served the reader. Watch the smallest item on the diplomatic table instead of the communiqués: the Geneva meeting of 21 countries on 25 October identified prisoner exchanges and coordination over Sudan’s secondary school examinations as confidence-building steps. Exam coordination is concrete and falsifiable in a way a Quad roadmap is not. If that cannot happen, nothing larger will.