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Image caption, Many people fleeing conflict found to be malnourished Article information Author, James Copnall Role, BBC Newsday presenter
1 hour ago
Mohanad El Baral is one of many Sudanese civilians doing all they can to prevent a devastating famine, but there's one photo he'll never forget.
Sadiq, a middle-aged father, thrusts his painfully thin legs forward, gripping the arms of his wheelchair to stay upright.
“Although he is in a wheelchair, Sadig is not disabled,” Baral said, “he is just so malnourished that he has lost the ability to walk.”
Balal, who is based in the UK, is one of the co-founders of the Khartoum Aid Kitchen, which provides life-sustaining food to tens of thousands of people in the Sudanese capital.
When volunteers found Sadiq, he “hadn't had a proper meal in over a month,” Baral said, because he had been giving all the food he could get his hands on to his children.
Sadly, there are many people like Sadig in Sudan today.
The country is being wrecked by war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which erupted last April.
More than nine million people have been forced to flee their homes, and everyone in the country is affected in some way.
Things will get even worse.
“We expect that by September, around 70 percent of the population will be in extreme hunger,” said Timo Gasbeek, a food security expert based in Sudan.
“That could mean 2.5 million deaths, maybe more. It could reach 4 million. There's not enough food.”
He said the way food kitchens have been distributing food has been a big help but not enough.
“The war has crippled the country's economy and people have no money,” said Amghad al-Farid, a veteran human rights activist who runs the think tank Fikra for Research and Development.
“The RSF has also occupied Gezira state, which has the largest agricultural program in Sudan and produces many of our basic needs.
“And food imports have fallen due to high inflation,” Dr Farid explained.
This meant that food was scarce and, if there was any, it was very expensive.
Image caption: Fighting has left parts of the capital in ruins, with homes and shops looted
Throughout the war, BBC's Newsday programme has received regular updates from Ahmed, a resident of Omdurman, one of the three cities that make up the capital.
In some parts of Omdurman controlled by the RSFS, prices have risen by 400 percent in recent days, said Ahmed, who would only give his first name.
“My wife came back from the area and she heard that most people only eat one meal a day, and sometimes they don't even eat that.
“This was not the case a few months ago when food looted from factories was being sold cheaply.
“Food is now very expensive and scarce in RSF-controlled areas.
“Hundreds of people are queuing near where I am to buy lentils for breakfast, and some even add water to them so they can eat them in the evening,” Ahmed said.
He had to explain to his young children why they could no longer eat the biscuits they once loved, and that if things were tough for his family, they were far worse for many others.
Ahmed said humanitarian aid is rarely arriving and people are only surviving thanks to soup kitchens, but some are running out of money and even food to buy.
Baral of the Khartoum Aid Kitchen knows people who have died of starvation.
People are suffering and dying not only in Khartoum but also in Darfur, Kordofan, Gezira and elsewhere.
Ayman Musa from the NGO Southern Kordofan Blue Nile Adjustment Unit said people in the southern Nuba Mountains region had to boil the leaves to survive.
Aid workers such as Justin Brady, head of the U.N. humanitarian agency in Sudan (OCHA), have expressed despair over the lack of international attention to Sudan's war, saying the international community has simply not provided the funds needed to help those in need.
More than $2 billion (£1.6 billion) was pledged at a donor conference in Paris in April, but Mr Brady said “that's proving to be a bit of an illusion”.
“Of that, just under $1 billion is earmarked for humanitarian assistance in Sudan, noting that some of that funding has already been distributed and some of the promised amount is yet to materialize.”
Image caption: Hundreds of thousands of people have fled to neighbouring Chad – just a fraction of the millions who have been forced from their homes.
Many Sudanese believe the world is turning its back on Sudan's suffering.
“Both sides are using hunger as a weapon of war,” said Alex de Waal of the World Peace Foundation, who has studied hunger and conflict in Sudan since the early 1980s.
De Waal said the RSF was “essentially a predatory machine.”
“They ravage the countryside and the towns, stealing everything they can, and thus sustaining themselves.”
Meanwhile, the Sudanese army is “trying to starve areas under RSF control” to increase pressure on its rival.
De Waal added that both sides have “shown no intention of giving up these cheap and highly effective weapons”.
Both deny the allegations.
But across the country, people are hungry, worrying about where their next meal will come from, and in some cases dying of hunger.
What many agree is that without a major effort to end the fighting and reach out to those in despair, things will soon get much worse.
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Image credit: Getty Images/BBC
