(December 30, 2025)

The war, which erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has devastated civilian infrastructure, collapsed basic services and triggered one of the world’s largest displacement crises.

A nutrition survey conducted this month in Um Baru locality in Sudan’s North Darfur state – one of the regions worst affected by the fighting – found that more than half of children under five are acutely malnourished.

These are among the highest rates ever recorded in a standardized emergency assessment, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said, warning that without urgent, unhindered humanitarian access, children face an immediate risk of death from preventable causes.

The survey screened nearly 500 children and found acute malnutrition rates of 53 per cent – more than three times the World Health Organization’s emergency threshold. Eighteen per cent of children were suffering from severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition that can kill within weeks if untreated.