GENEVA: Women are bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, with the majority of female-headed households not having enough food to eat, the UN said on Friday.
“Female-headed households are now three times more likely to be food insecure. Three-quarters of these households report not having enough to eat,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said in Geneva.
“Hunger is becoming increasingly gendered,” he added, pointing to pre-existing gender inequalities in the country being exacerbated by the ongoing conflict, which entered its 1,000th day on Friday.
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More than 100,000 are estimated to have fled El-Fasher since the Rapid Support Forces took control there following an 18-month siege.
UN Women has previously warned that women face the risk of sexual violence while searching for food.
UN agencies called for immediate international action to provide aid to the Darfur city of El-Fasher, taken by the Rapid Support Forces in late October, as well as to Kadugli, another besieged city in Sudan’s south. Both cities are facing famine.
More than 100,000 are estimated to have fled El-Fasher since the RSF took control there following an 18-month siege.
OCHA said it is seeking to make Sudan the first country to sign an agreement with the US to receive part of the $2 billion in assistance it pledged at the end of December.
More than 21 million people are currently estimated to be acutely food insecure across the country. Some 34 million people are in need of humanitarian support, half of whom are children, according to the UN.
OCHA said it did not yet have an update on plans to return to El-Fasher, following international aid staff’s initial assessment of the city in December, since its takeover by the RSF.
Germany plans to host a Sudan aid conference in the spring to raise emergency relief funds.
The conference would be held around the anniversary of the 2023 outbreak of the civil war in April, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.
“Today, the world commemorates a sad date: 1,000 days of war in Sudan,” she said in Berlin.
“Far too many people continue to suffer and die there, victims of hunger, thirst, displacement, and rape.” Previous Sudan aid conferences were held in Paris in 2024 and London in 2025.
“The world’s largest humanitarian crisis has already driven millions of civilians into poverty and many tens of thousands to their deaths,” the spokeswoman said.
“Germany is doing everything in its power, both politically and in humanitarian terms, to help the people on the ground and to end the fighting.”
