The World Food Programme of the United Nations has called for an urgent ceasefire in Sudan to allow humanitarian aid to enter.

Negotiations for a ceasefire are scheduled to resume this Wednesday after a continuous conflict lasting nearly a year and a half, during which all agreements have failed so far.

Lina Kinsley, the spokesperson for the World Food Programme in Sudan, said in statements to the German media network "Deutschland": "The largest hunger crisis in the world is taking place there. Half of Sudan's population is suffering from hunger. This amounts to 25 million people - this is the population of Australia."

Sudan has been experiencing a bloody power struggle since April 2023 between the de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The conflict has led to the largest refugee crisis in the world, according to United Nations data. More than ten million people have been displaced or fled, and many of them have faced this situation multiple times.

Kinsley confirmed that the first famine in the world in seven years has occurred in a camp for displaced persons near the besieged city of El Fasher in North Darfur, explaining that there are at least 600,000 people affected at this highest level of hunger crises, and she stated: "Hunger is not just affecting some areas, but the whole country. Aid must reach the country as soon as possible to prevent the tragic situation from deteriorating further."

The prospects for reaching an agreement in the negotiations taking place today in the Swiss city of Geneva are slim. A delegation from the Sudanese army described the preliminary discussions with the US representative in Saudi Arabia as unsuccessful, adding that the military leadership must now decide whether it wants to participate in the negotiations at all. In recent days, battles have erupted again in Sudan, resulting in casualties and injuries, with the fighting reaching Omdurman near the capital Khartoum, as well as El Fasher.