Driven to starvation, Sudanese eat weeds and plants to survive

With Sudan in the grips of war and millions struggling to find enough to eat, many are turning to weeds and wild plants to quiet their pangs of hunger.

They boil the plants in water with salt because, simply, there is nothing else.

"So it’s really is leftover food waste made out of peanuts shells which is usually used as animal fodder and ... those of the kind of extreme majors that people have been resorting to be able to survive," said Leni Kinzli, the World Food Programme's Sudan spokesperson.

"We’ve also received reports of people eating grass, people eating leaves," she added.

After two years of conflict, 24.6 million people in Sudan face acute food insecurity—nearly half the population, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.

Aid workers say the war spiked market prices, limited aid delivery, and shrunk agricultural lands in a country that was once a breadbasket of the world.

Sudan plunged into war in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the Sudanese army and its rival paramilitary the Rapid Support Forces escalated to fighting in the capital Khartoum and spread across the country, killing over 20,000 people, displacing nearly 13 million people, and pushing many to the brink of famine in what aid workers deemed the world’s largest hunger crisis.

Food insecurity is especially bad in areas in the Kordofan region, the Nuba Mountains, and Darfur, where El Fasher and Zamzam camp are inaccessible, aid groups said.

Some people survive on just one meal a day, which is mainly millet porridge. In North Darfur, some people even sucked on coal to ease their hunger.

Sudanese agricultural minister Abu Bakr al-Bashari told Al-Hadath news channel in April that there are no indicators of famine in the country, but there is shortage of food supplies in areas controlled by the paramilitary forces, known as RSF.

However, Kinzli said 17 areas in Gezeira, most of the Darfur region, and Khartoum, including Jebel Aulia are at risk of famine.

Each month, over 4 million people receive assistance from the group, including 1.7 million in areas facing famine or at risk, Kinzli said.

The state is suffering from two conflicts: one between the Rapid Support Forces and the army, and another with the People’s Liberation Movement-North, who are fighting against the army and have ties with the RSF, making it nearly impossible to access food, clean water, or medicine.

In southwest Sudan, residents of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, rely on growing crops, but agricultural lands are shrinking due to fighting and lack of farming resources.

El Serif camp is sheltering nearly 49,000 displaced people, the camp’s civic leader Abdalrahman Idris told the AP. Since the war began in 2023, the camp has taken in over 5,000 new arrivals, with a recent surge coming from the greater Khartoum region, which is the Sudanese military said it took full control of in May.

In North Darfur, south of El Fasher, lies Zamzam camp, one of the worst areas struck by famine and recent escalating violence. An aid worker with the Emergency Response Rooms previously based in the camp who asked not to be identified in fear of retribution for speaking with the press, told the AP that the recent wave of violence killed some and left others homeless.

Barely anyone was able to afford food from the market as a pound of sugar costs 20,000 Sudanese pounds ($33) and a soap bar 10,000 Sudanese pounds ($17).

The recent attacks in Zamzam worsened the humanitarian situation and he had to flee to a safer area. Some elderly men, pregnant women, and children have died of starvation and the lack of medical treatment, according to an aid worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he's fearful of retribution for speaking publicly while living in an area controlled by one of the warring parties. He didn't provide the exact number of those deaths.