Three Years of War in Sudan: Surviving Violence, Displacement and Hunger

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now to Sudan, where millions of people are trying to survive on just one meal a day, according to a new report published by several humanitarian organizations who say many Sudanese have resorted to eating animal feed and leaves. Tjada McKenna, CEO of Mercy Corps, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss their report and what she witnessed on her recent trip there.

 

HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Tjada McKenna, the CEO of Mercy Corps. Thanks so much for joining us. You recently just returned from Sudan, and I wanna point out some of the grim milestone numbers that your organization, Mercy Corps released in a recent report. It said 15 million people have had to flee their homes. And you say about twice that number, almost 30 million people are in need of some sort of humanitarian aid, which makes this the worst humanitarian aid crisis on the planet at the moment, just by sheer numbers. What did you see on your most recent visit? What are the people that you spoke to telling you?

 

TJADA D’OYEN MCKENNA: What we saw is, you know, civilians who are entering year four of this conflict. Several people told me stories of having to flee more than once to different areas to get away from conflict. And that fleeing – one of our own staff members told me that she was walking by foot for 21 days, right – and in that 21 days, you’re dodging conflict, you’re dodging robbers, you are looking for food, you’re looking for sustenance.

The Sudanese people are quite resilient and are working to help themselves, but they’re really struggling with lack of availability of food, displaced family members. People haven’t seen some of their families in multiple years as people have fled here and there. And really trying to make a living and keeping things going as this conflict grinds on and on.

 

SREENIVASAN: So what’s the most pressing need right now? I suppose it’s probably dependent on location that you talk about, but is it healthcare? Is it food? Is it shelter?

 

MCKENNA: Yeah. A lot of the systems that civilians rely on to live have been decimated and deliberately attacked during this conflict. What we’re hearing from people closest to the conflict lines are that healthcare facilities have been systematically destroyed. So there is very little healthcare also there. This is a severe food crisis. Sudan is an agricultural producing nation. We have turned agricultural fields into battlefields. The closer you are to the conflict, the food that you’re eating has had to cross battle lines. Right now, particularly with the war in Iran, prices are up, fuel prices are up over 35%. You need fuel for generators for any agricultural production. It’s planting season right now. Fertilizer, they rely on fertilizer and other supplies coming in through the Strait of Hormuz. And all those fuel prices increases rocket through society. Right. So it’s food prices, it’s everything they need to do, it’s now more expensive. So, this really is just a catastrophe that continues to pile on for the people of Sudan.

 

SREENIVASAN: You know, when you look at this kind of ripple effect that you’re talking about, about fertilizer costs and fuel costs, I mean, this is sort of an American frame, but most of the imagery that we are familiar with Sudan – at least in the recent past – is a war torn land. And what you’re describing is that there was actually and is agricultural potential and there were, and are sort of crops that are being grown there. 

 

MCKENNA: Yes. Sudan is quite a large country geographically. And a lot of the violence has, has been localized to certain areas or it has moved. So you do have pockets that have been relatively stable through the war. You have pockets that are newly stable. And so what you have are people who have moved to security – when they moved to Sudan, they’ve moved to these pockets of security. Sudan, the largest piece of the economy is agriculture. People depend on food to survive, but also for income, for exports. And so right now we are in the middle of planting season. So people need inputs. They need, they need fertilizer, they need seeds. They need to make decisions about those things. And with prices up, those things are in scarce supply. And you know, with agriculture, there’s like a small window of the time for things to happen. So decisions people make now affect food security for months, even a year to come in some places where there’s only one crop cycle a season. 

 

So people should think of it as a big country. And particularly before the war. You know, when I talked to our staff, especially people that were living in Khartoum, you know, the whole city had to flee when it was taken down. These are people who were going to university, who had jobs, quite cosmopolitan, used to go into restaurants every night, families forced to flee in all directions. And what you still have in parts of Sudan are people that are working to make a living that are providing a lot of people who’ve been displaced, who are providing income for their relatives, still in conflict areas, and people trying to reunite their families and determine how to survive and what they’re going to do as this conflict grinds on.

 

SREENIVASAN: So if I’m a farmer and the cost of running my tractor just increased significantly because the fuel is not flowing through the Strait of Hormuz and it’s gotten more expensive, if the price of fertilizer, which I need for this planting season is now through the roof, because half of that comes through the Strait of Hormuz, do I give up on this crop season? Do I – who absorbs the cost?

 

MCKENNA: Yeah. If you’re a farmer, you’re likely to not give up just because that is your income and you need some of that for your food themselves. But the chief economist of the food and agriculture, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said farmers have like a 40 day window where they like make choices and don’t look back. So either you’re farming a smaller piece of land or you’re deciding to go ahead with suboptimal inputs and hoping for the best. And particularly with fuel prices where you may need some of that fuel to run tractors or to run your irrigation system, you quite literally are at the mercy of weather and all kinds of other things. So you are planting and hoping for the best. And in some cases what we’ve seen from farmers who are closer to the conflict, you’re also praying that you are there and have not had to flee by the time that harvest comes.

 

SREENIVASAN: Yeah. So what happens to the long-term infrastructure costs to this economy if the irrigation systems that the farmers depend on are attacked or bombed, because that takes a long time to rebuild.

 

MCKENNA: We do need to rebuild them. And what we’re seeing now in areas that are, are kind of past the conflict or who’ve settled into a more stable day-to-day is, you know, already the funds that were needed for emergency humanitarian assistance were quite low. But now there really are no funds for what we consider long-term developments. That is things like rebuilding irrigation systems, rebuilding civilian infrastructure. And you still have tens of millions of people trying to live in these places that need that infrastructure. They need the irrigation, they need functioning healthcare system, they need functioning markets. And that’s what people at Sudan are asking for. They’re saying, invest in us. We are competent, we are resilient. We are here. We’re not leaving our country. Help us to rebuild. That’s exactly what people are asking for at this moment.

 

SREENIVASAN: You know, if so many people have fled, I’m wondering if the remainder of the population in some areas are people who were kind of left there to hold down the fort, so to speak. You know, you have some members of the family who might be leaving to try to get some income somewhere else to send money back. And then so what happens to that core population who’s left on the ground?

 

MCKENNA: Well, that’s exactly what I’m hearing. So there is some fluidity in terms of people coming back or hoping things have settled and trying to go back to more stable places. You know, some of my own staff members have said ‘look I’m the one that was designated to go work, to go bring income back.’ Or many of my staff members are hosting, you know, upwards of 10, 15 members of their family themselves. So, so these are people that are the lifelines for large numbers of people. And they are people that really love their country and that want to stay. They want to see their relatives who’ve had to go to other countries or neighboring cities return. I have younger staff members who they’re trying to still arrange marriages with people who live in other places. Like people, you know, they’re hopeful. They want to move on, they want to live their lives, and they, they want to rebuild and, and they’re asking for that support to try to continue to survive and thrive.

 

SREENIVASAN: I also wanna ask a little bit about the sort of youngest victims of this. According to a recent report from UNICEF, more than 4,300 children have been killed or maimed this year alone, and an estimated 4.2 million children across Sudan are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition. How does Mercy Corps respond to something, a crisis like this?

 

MCKENNA: Yeah, women and children are always the most vulnerable in these situations. And Sudan has been no different. When you’re attacking healthcare centers, you’re attacking children.

When we have situations where people are down to one meal a day it’s children, especially the youngest children, that feel that most acutely in one area of Darfur of the children that we were able to get to and measure more than 70% were suffering some effects of malnutrition already. And depending on the severity of that, that can cause like brain damage and other damage that, that, that people don’t recover for from life. So we’re quite worried about young people very focused on making sure they have safe spaces that they are able to go to school where necessary and making sure that their families have access to cash to supply their needs and, and to help them and access to food as well so that we’re not, that they’re not starving and suffering.

SREENIVASAN: Something that’s a little bit disconcerting, I think, is how normalized it’s become for us to hear about attacks on civilian infrastructure. I know that you’ve also recently visited Ukraine and I’m wondering if there’s this, you know, through line, something different happening in how we prosecute wars, whether it’s Ukraine or Sudan or Iran. I mean, we recently had the US president threatening desalination plants and power plants as if that was normal.

 

MCKENNA: Yeah. We are sadly entering what I’m calling an era of indifference. You know, attacks on civilian infrastructure are considered war crimes. They’re not legitimate means. And, and starting with the Ukraine War and on down, we’ve seen increasing attacks on civilian infrastructure like, you know, deliberate attacks on hospitals. In Ukraine, you’re seeing deliberate attacks even on large agriculture facilities. Particularly now in this area of drone warfare. Those attacks have become even more personalized and specific to civilian infrastructure, whether they be agriculture areas, hospitals, electricity supplies. And so increasingly not only are civilians being targeted, but the lifelines that they need to survive are being seen as legitimate targets. And that’s unacceptable. And it is something that we as a world need to recommit to saying that this is unacceptable. And, and that these are not legitimate rules of war. And we’re seeing these practiced by states as well as armed groups. It’s unacceptable.

 

SREENIVASAN: So how does an organization like yours, Mercy Corps, try to assist when it’s these larger structural problems that you’re having to overcome and the people who are coming to you are saying, listen, I’m a farmer, but the irrigation system just got bombed and I need money for seed and my fertilizer costs and my fuel costs are up. Where do you begin?

 

MCKENNA: Yeah. Almost every single one of my staff members are people that are displaced themselves. People that are working for us in cities where often they’re not from, far from home. And so what we really look at the resilience and the strength of the people that we work with and try to mirror them.

We work with a lot of local Sudanese organizations who may have access to places that we don’t. We are talking to them about their informal networks and bringing people together. We’re trying to keep the economies going. There are still local markets that are functioning. We’re trying to balance out supply and demand. We do that a lot through the provision of cash so that people can buy what they need. We also are helping small businesses that buy agricultural supplies or that buy other goods to keep these markets going so that people do have healthy and sustainable ways to make a living and to get the other supplies that they need. So we really try to work within the systems that exist while also doing our best to advocate in foreign capitals and other places for pressure to not be harming civilian infrastructure, to do peace negotiations and to provide funds for people who are trying to help themselves do that better. People in Sudan are working so hard and so hard just to survive and they deserve more from us.

 

SREENIVASAN: Is there any hope of this war, this conflict ending? I mean, you’ve had these kind of donor conversations recently in Berlin, but also in London and Paris, and they seem to be on kind of parallel but distant tracks because the people who are actually in war, the main sides, they’re not necessarily at these tables.

 

MCKENNA: Yeah. There’s an old saying like, no, you can’t be for us without us. And obviously the people of Sudan need to be in these conversations. The civilians of Sudan need to be front and center in considerations here. But also we have to recognize where things are relatively stable. Areas where that are no longer in active conflict – we need to be supporting, we need to be supporting those in conflict, but also those areas that may be past that point to be resilient and to thrive to help the rest of the country survive through this conflict.

 

SREENIVASAN: Give me some perspective on what the kind of international aid community’s capacity is. Because, you know, look, we’ve gone through different natural disasters, we’ve gone through different conflicts before, but right now it just seems like you’ve got you know, Gaza to Ukraine, to Lebanon, to Sudan. There are so many different crises, at least conflicts that are happening around the world right now that are putting so much pressure on different populations. Are we at capacity, near capacity, over capacity in what we can do about it?

 

MCKENNA: Yeah. The aid system has really been severely disrupted and devastated. The United States funding accounted for more than 40% of humanitarian funding worldwide. That just wasn’t funding – a lot of United States work was underpinning supply chains and in its entire ecosystem of actors from the UN to international NGOs to local NGOs. So the way that the US kind of unilaterally pulled out of the system in a very sudden way really like upended all of those things. And it’s been, you know, all of those cuts to the UN systems, you know, we depend on UN air services to move around in a lot of these places that are difficult to reach. Even down to supply chains for things like malnutrition – that have affected the whole system. So you had a system that was already regrouping and trying to figure out how to just do day-to-day things with less funding and with learning the things that were there.

 

And then on top of that, you have crisis after crisis compounding. So when the US pulled out, then we saw several European donors also pulling back funds to fund their own defense. On top of that, we’ve seen escalations in the war in Ukraine, this war in Iran, all of a sudden Lebanon, you see large numbers of people in need throughout the Middle East that were not in need before. So at the same time that we have pulled back money from the humanitarian aid system, we’ve also increased conflicts and disruption to add to the number of those people needing assistance. So the system really does need to be funded and we really need more efforts towards peace efforts around the world so that we can get to the people that need it the most.

 

SREENIVASAN: Yeah. I know one of your former jobs was at USAID around food insecurity. And I wonder if you have, you know, kind of a before and after that you can tell us or think about where, when you were in that job, what was perhaps the assistance in a crisis like what’s happening in Sudan versus what you are seeing on the ground today without USAID’s presence?

 

MCKENNA: I did have the privilege of serving at USAID for a number of years. Before, in a crisis like this you would see like a, you know, a lot more of a diplomatic effort on the ground, like a strong cadre of USAID staff who were very in the know of what was going on, funding a variety of international and local actors. You saw a UN that was much more robust and had a lot more capacity to do coordination services across agencies. And you saw a lot of flexibility in terms of really like meeting people’s needs.

Right now, that – there was also a certain amount of diplomatic pressure that the presence of, of the diplomatic core could exert on local authorities and people in the conflict who are causing it to kind of, to protect civilian infrastructure and do that. Now not only are you seeing that funding not being there you’re seeing people that aren’t as aware of what’s happening, aren’t as in touch with the different actors on the ground not helping play that central coordination function. And you’re just seeing a lot of people struggling to serve and less of a sense that there’s that, that there’s a bit of a calvary that’s on its way. There’s a void that there’s a big void there and it’s felt.

 

SREENIVASAN: The CEO of, of Mercy Corps. Tjada McKenna, thanks so much for your time.

 

MCKENNA: Thank you for having me.