At least 200,000 people have been newly displaced in Sudan's Kordofan region since late last year, the United Nations has reported, as intensified fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to force civilians from their homes. In the regional capital El Obeid, more than 5,000 families arrived in a single week alone, seeking relative safety from the violence engulfing surrounding areas.

Kordofan is a vast region in central Sudan that has become one of the most contested frontlines in a war that began in April 2023. That conflict, pitting the national army against the RSF — a paramilitary force that grew out of the notorious Janjaweed militias — has killed at least 59,000 people by conservative estimates, with some figures placing the toll far higher, and has forced some 14 million Sudanese from their homes in what has become one of the world's worst displacement crises.

The suffering is compounded by a catastrophic collapse in food production. Across Sudan, farmland that could ease what aid agencies describe as the world's largest hunger crisis lies largely fallow. Farmers face a devastating convergence of pressures: active conflict, soaring input costs driven in part by disruptions to fuel and fertiliser supplies, and now a powerful El Niño climate pattern that has delayed crucial rains and caused water levels in the Nile to drop sharply. Nearly 20 million people in Sudan are already experiencing crisis levels of hunger. In agricultural heartlands such as Gedaref state near the Ethiopian border, farmers have gathered for rain-invoking prayers as fields that should be green in August remain parched and brown. Many have abandoned their crops entirely, calculating that harvests would not justify the cost of planting.

The situation is why Sudan's crisis matters far beyond its borders. With 65 percent of the country's vast arable land already out of production, and market activity severely disrupted by years of war, the country's capacity to feed its own population — let alone contribute to regional food security — is eroding rapidly. Analysts warn that without a halt to the fighting and coordinated international support, the overlapping shocks of conflict, climate, and economic collapse risk pushing millions further into famine in the months ahead.