Hundreds of children have died of starvation and disease in a drought in Sudan caused by the record-breaking El Niño. The risk of this leading to a full-blown famine is growing.
Almost half the country is experiencing drought, which in some areas is the worst in decades, according to a warning from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a partnership of the United Nations and charity organisations. As a result, crops are failing and people are dying in a “humanitarian catastrophe, already of historic proportions”, it said.
Hunger has reached famine levels in two refugee camps in Darfur, a region in western Sudan. While that’s not enough for the IPC to declare a famine across the region, the partnership said it has resulted in hundreds of deaths. Most of these are children, who are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition, as well as outbreaks of cholera and measles. At least 1800 people have died of malnutrition in three areas of Darfur controlled by a rebel faction led by Abdel Wahid al-Nur, according to the group.
Almost 29 million people, 62 per cent of the country’s population, are already being forced to eat less or go hungry. As the spotty harvest comes in, they won’t be able to store food or make money to buy it before the next rainy season in June, dramatically increasing the risk of widespread famine, says Manon Radosta at the non-governmental organisation CARE, a member of the IPC.
“Families are skipping meals. They’re not eating or they’re eating just porridge,” she says. “It would not take much to tip it. We cannot predict it, but we’re extremely worried that the situation will be so severe that people will be massively starving.”
In 2003, ethnic minorities in Darfur rebelled against Sudan’s largely Arab government, and government-backed Arab paramilitaries began killing civilians in a conflict that led to about 300,000 deaths. Twenty years later, the paramilitaries launched a civil war against Sudan’s new military government and killed thousands of non-Arab civilians in Darfur. Some of these massacres bore the “hallmarks of genocide”, the UN found.
The war has displaced 14 million people and disrupted farming and livestock herding. Prices of food and fuel have also shot up as the US-Iran conflict interrupts shipping on the Strait of Hormuz. Now, El Niño has reduced rainfall to crops including the main staple, sorghum, and withered vegetation for grazing. Ninety per cent of Sudan’s agriculture relies on rain rather than irrigation.
During this natural climate phase, weakened easterly trade winds allow warm water to slosh back eastwards across the tropical Pacific. A centre of rising, moist air that is heated by this water moves eastward as well, shifting atmospheric circulation.
A 2025 review paper suggested the rising air in the central-eastern Pacific transports heat to the east and west through atmospheric waves, encouraging air to descend rather than rise over the Sahel region across the continent, including in Sudan.
“That descent warms and dries the air, inhibiting upward motion of the air masses that produces summer monsoon rainfall,” says Emily Black at the University of Reading, UK. The atmospheric waves promote easterly winds that blow against the movement of warm, moist air from the Atlantic Ocean into the heart of Africa, the paper added.
The El Niño is also forecast to bring potentially devastating drought to vulnerable countries in southern Africa, as well as heavy rainfall and flooding to the Horn of Africa. Nations including the US and the UK have cut foreign aid funding that could help prevent these extreme weather events from turning into humanitarian disasters.
High-income donor countries have given only $1.25 billion of the $2.87 billion in aid the UN has said is needed this year in Sudan. “The gap means right now we are unable to keep people alive,” says Radosta.
Besides providing funds, other countries should pressure Sudan’s warring parties to stop targeting markets and water sources with drone strikes, she adds. The United Arab Emirates has been accused of arming the paramilitaries, while Turkey, Russia, Egypt and Iran are backing the armed forces.
The El Niño is still heating up and could exceed the previous sea-surface temperature record by 60 per cent. That will warm the atmosphere, and probably make 2027 the hottest year ever. It could also bring heatwaves across the tropics next March, April and May, say Liz Stephens, also at the University of Reading.
During the last El Niño in 2024, Sudan experienced prolonged temperatures above 40°C (104°F). “We’re loading the dice for some really extreme heat next year across the Sahel,” says Stephens. “We might expect to see increased mortality due to that as well.”