Dire warnings of Sudan famine
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2024
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A consortium of UN and other agencies says that famine is spreading across the war-ravaged country. The group, known as the IPC - the "Integrated Food Security Phase Classification" - say that five areas in the west and south of Sudan are already in famine. We hear about the details of the report and from one of the agencies working in the city of Nyala in the South.
Also on the programme; we hear from Mozambique's capital Maputo where protests are continuing over disputed presidential election results; and a NASA spacecraft attempts the closest ever approach to the Sun.
(Photo: People queuing for food aid in South Sudan; Credit : Photo by GUY PETERSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service |
| 0:07.4 | Studios in London. I'm Tim Franks. We're beginning the programme with the biggest, deepest |
| 0:13.2 | humanitarian crisis in the world and the one that gets, relatively speaking, among the least |
| 0:19.0 | attention of any of them. It's Sudan and the news today |
| 0:23.2 | from a consortium of UN and other agencies that famine is spreading across that war-ravaged country. |
| 0:30.4 | The group, known as the IPC, or to give it its full title, the Integrated Food Security Phase |
| 0:36.8 | Classification, |
| 0:38.1 | says that five areas are already in famine in the West and South of Sudan. |
| 0:43.5 | A further five are expected to reach full-blown famine by May next year. |
| 0:48.5 | We're going to hear first from Jan Egelen, |
| 0:50.4 | director of the Norwegian Refugee Council, |
| 0:52.2 | who's recently back from a trip to Darfur in |
| 0:54.2 | Western Sudan. First, what is actually meant by this precise classification of famine? |
| 1:01.2 | When hunger and starvation becomes famine, people die. Two per 10,000 or more per day. Usually, |
| 1:09.4 | it's many more because the starvation has gone on so long. |
| 1:14.6 | And that's what happening now in Sudan. I haven't seen for many years a place where it's now |
| 1:20.8 | five areas with famine. And the prediction is that there will be many more next year. |
| 1:27.7 | How many people does the IPC think could be affected by famine conditions? |
| 1:35.3 | I think it's 600,000 plus people in that situation of risking to die very soon from famine. |
| 1:49.3 | But the figure is 26 million in the stages before that. I mean, hunger, starvation, that is extreme. It's not a natural disaster, is it? |
| 1:57.1 | It's not. This is man-made. It's the war. Actually, there was a pretty good agricultural season now of late in Sudan, good rains. |
| 2:09.1 | But when the farmers flee for their lives, the soil has become a battleground. |
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