executive summary
The report documents the worsening nutrition situation in Sudan since the start of the conflict and presents the results of a Nutrition Vulnerability Analysis (NVA) conducted between March and May 2024. The aim of the analysis is to fill a critical gap in understanding the nutrition situation in the context of limited anthropometric data, and to provide key information on the causes and future course of acute malnutrition.
The analysis was conducted with technical support from the Nutrition Information System – Global Technical Working Group (NIS-GTWG) and led by the Sudan National Nutrition Cluster. Its objective was to analyze the nutrition situation with a particular focus on the states of Greater Darfur, Greater Kordofan, Al Jazeera and Khartoum. NVA adopted a multi-sectoral analytical approach focusing on the underlying drivers of acute malnutrition, namely food, services and practices. Due to the limited amount of newly collected quantitative data, NVA focused on collecting secondary data and qualitative information from interviews with key informants and working sessions with partners in the field, with the aim of ensuring a common understanding of the current nutrition situation.
The analysis reveals an alarming situation for the various drivers of acute malnutrition: additional burden on host communities due to large and frequent population movements, limited humanitarian access, food insecurity, lack of access to drinking water and sanitation, and increased risk of infectious diseases due to weakened health system capacity. While we acknowledge the differences in data and information available in the 10 states and limitations of state-level analysis, the nutritional security of children under five and pregnant and lactating women is at serious risk. In Central, South and West Darfur, the information analyzed leads us to conclude that all underlying determinants have already reached crisis levels, and as in West Darfur, they have reached “extremely critical” levels. The situation is not much better in Greater Kordofan, where information availability was more limited, and there are great concerns about the changing nutrition situation, especially as the conflict frontline is very fluid and has recently negatively affected humanitarian access. Meanwhile, in Khartoum and Al Jazeera, all the information collected indicates an already critical situation for all underlying determinants.
