Sudan's Darfur faces driest rainy season in four decades: WFP

Sudan's Darfur region is experiencing its driest rainy season since the 1980s, according to the World Food Programme, as climate change worsens famine conditions in the middle of a brutal war.

"Darfur hasn't been this dry since 1984," WFP deputy chief Carl Skau said on Monday after travelling through the region during the rainy season, which runs from June to September.

"Everywhere I stopped, what people wanted to talk about was the drought," he continued. "Everyone is frightened that this will have a serious hit on agriculture and the agriculture outcome."

Darfur, already ravaged by decades of conflict, has faced some of the worst violence of the war in Sudan between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which has raged since 2023 and killed more than 200,000 people.

The region hosts 5.6 million displaced people, according to UN figures, many of them facing severe hunger.

Much of the vast region usually turns green during the rainy season as its many valleys and seasonal rivers overflow, irrigating farmland crucial for keeping starvation at bay.

But this year marked the driest on historical record, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

This week, local responders across Darfur warned the drought was forcing new waves of displacement and the collapse of local agriculture.

The Emergency Response Room in North Darfur's Kutum warned of a "mounting crisis of livestock and livelihoods caused by scarce rainfall and a lack of water and pasture".

Even before the war, Darfur was often rocked by deadly violence between rival groups over water sources.

A decline in rainfall over Sudan and eastern Africa, connected to the El Nino climate pattern, has also led to lower water levels in the Nile River.

It has jeopardised Sudan's ongoing planting season, threatening food security while nearly 20 million people face crisis levels of hunger.