19.5 million people are hungry in Sudan

Issue #387: Sudan's hunger crisis is getting worse. Much worse. A new analysis shows that nearly 20 million people do not have enough food, and at least 835,000 children are dangerously thin. If it goes on like this, they're at risk of dying this year.

Also in this week's issue: Hunger in Somalia, an Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo, 133,000 missing people in Mexico, elections in Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, and Uganda, a new species of dinosaur, and a new name for an island nation that is tired of colonizers mispronouncing their real name. Plus, handpicked recommendations on what to listen to, watch, and read. From a conversation between two Black women about what it's actually like to move to Africa, Sudanese women healing each other, to the actual data in your sh*t, literally.

This issue has been edited by Jonathan Ramsay.

Nearly 2 in 5 Sudanese people don't have reliable access to food right now, said the UN

Refresher: The war started in April 2023. Remember: RSF (a paramilitary group) and SAF (the national army) are fighting each other. Lately, the war has been changing. There are more and more drone attacks, on civilians, on important infrastructure. As a result, Sudan's healthcare system has been severely damaged: so damaged that by January 2026, around 40% of health facilities were no longer working. Overall, more than 8.9 million people are displaced within Sudan (they had to leave their homes, but stayed within the country). The war in Iran is also affecting Sudan; everything, including farming, has become much more expensive.

What happened:
Last week, a new analysis from the global food insecurity monitor, IPC (they're the 'guys' who make sure we know about populational hunger levels, basically), said that 19.5 million Sudanese still did not have enough food and were facing serious hunger between February and May 2026. That's two in every five people in the country. The situation is really bad for people in North Darfur, South Darfur and South Kordofan.

Why this matters: Some 53 million people live in Sudan.

Tell me more:
The report goes into detail how many people are in which "Phase" (IPC uses "Phases" to describe the level of hunger). Here are the main findings:

• Around 14 million people are in "Crisis" (Phase 3). They're likely skipping meals on the regular. Perhaps they might have started selling things they own to buy food. Children are eating once a day. They're not starving yet, but people in "Crisis" are making difficult choices every day just to get through the week.
• More than 5 million people are in "Emergency" (Phase 4). At this point, people have already sold everything they had, going entire days without eating. Children are losing muscle and weight very fast.
• Around 135,000 people are in the worst levels of hunger. "Phase 5" is called "Catastrophe," meaning people might actually die. They're that hungry.
• (This doesn't fall into any of the "Phases", but)825,000 children under the age of five, the report writes, will suffer from Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) in 2026. SAM is the most dangerous form of malnutrition. Children become extremely thin and weak, and their lives are at high risk. The SAM rate is 7% higher than in 2025. Between January and March 2026 alone, more than 98,500 children were brought to treatment centers for SAM. Again, it's especially bad for children in North Darfur and South Kordofan.

Right now, no area is officially classified as being in a famine. However, if fighting becomes worse, more people are forced to flee, or access to food, healthcare, clean water, and sanitation gets worse, then 14 areas in North Darfur, South Darfur, and South Kordofan could fall into famine.

The report also says, 'hey, take this all with a grain of salt. There are some places we can't even reach because of all the fighting, so we don't know what life is like there at the moment.' These are likely conservative estimates.

Good to know: When do we call it a "Famine"?
Three official conditions must happen at the same time for an area to be declared in Famine (also Phase 5; this "Phase" can mean two related but different things. "Catastrophe" applies to households. "Famine" to an entire area): 1) At least 20% of households have almost no access to food. 2) At least 30% of children are dangerously thin. 3) Two adults or four children die every day per 10,000 people from hunger-related causes, disease, or malnutrition. But don't "wait" for this to be declared before you sound the alarm. Politically, famine declarations are often treated almost like a legal category. By the time all three thresholds are clearly measurable, people have usually already been dying for a long time.

Any good news?
Actually, yes. In some places that were previously classified as being in famine, like El Fasher and Kadugli, more people now have access to more food. This is not necessarily because a lot of aid has come through, but because many starving people left those areas and moved elsewhere (where there is more food available).

What now?
Experts expect that everything will get worse, especially because between June and September, there's even less food around (it's the time before the next harvest). And chances are high that we might not even find out in time how bad it is. Already, humanitarian aid groups are struggling to reach people across Sudan. Access changes constantly, is dangerous, and often depends on negotiations with armed groups. In some of the areas people are most worried about, there is little or no reliable data available. That...