PBS News Hour

AMNA NAWAZ: Today, the United Nations Security Council discussed the 11-month-old brutal conflict in Sudan, the third largest country in Africa.

It's killed 14,000 people and displaced eight million so far.

The World Food Program now says what began as a power struggle could become the world's largest hunger crisis.

In a moment, Nick Schifrin speaks with the executive director of the World Food Program.

But, first, we hear from the Sudanese, who are victims of war crimes catastrophe and hunger.

And a caution: Some of the images in this story are disturbing NICK SCHIFRIN: With every step they take, they move further away from home.

Sudan refugees crowd a U.N. boat in search of safety, too young to walk themselves, old enough to bear the burden of war.

Every day, hundreds cross the border into South Sudan, children without enough food precariously close to starvation.

And so 27-year-old Mahide Ibrahim (ph) takes what she can, U.N. packets of energy for her husband and three children who fled Sudan's capital, Khartoum.

WOMAN (through translator): We came by bus.

It took us two days to reach here.

What we need is food.

The immediate support we need is to eat, to be able to survive.

NICK SCHIFRIN: What they have survived is civil war that turned residential blocks into battlegrounds.

It's a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, which the U.S. has accused of war crimes and has bombed residential villages, and, on the other side, the rebel paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, accused by the U.S. of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

RSF and allied militias hunt and kill young men they believe to be supporters of Sudan's army.

NAJWA MUSA KONDA, Sudanese Civil Rights Activist: You see your loved ones dying in front of your eyes, and then people come to rape you, and you don't understand what is going on.

What -- why?

What is the reason for all this?

NICK SCHIFRIN: Najwa Musa Konda is a Sudanese civil rights activist who we met in Washington.

She says the brutality of war on both sides has created a dystopian land of militia warfare and gender-based violence.

NAJWA MUSA KONDA: And when it happens for this area, the next area, people will start fleeing already, because they know the next will be them.

So they start running.

If they find men, many cases of arbitrary killings on the way while running away.

Women were raped also on the way.

And there is horrible, horrible stories, when the women are telling us they are completely traumatized.

NICK SCHIFRIN: When the RSF captured Wad Madani, Sudan's second largest city, last December, it took over the Sudan army's offices and burned down the city infrastructure, including the national bank.

Hundreds of thousands fled their homes, including Dr. Shakir Yahia of the international humanitarian group CARE.

DR. SHAKIR YAHIA, CARE Sudan: I was so scared.

So, yes, I was uncertain what's going to happen to my family, to my kids, these airstrikes, this shelling.

NICK SCHIFRIN: It was the second time he'd been forced to take his six children and find a new home.

He'd first fled Khartoum, then to Wad Madani, and then took his family to Kassala.

DR. SHAKIR YAHIA: I saw thousands of people escaping for their life, using whatever is available to move them out.

So women were scared that they might be attacked and might be looted.

So thousands of people were in panic.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The war has stolen the smile from his 6-year-old daughter, Reem (ph).

DR. SHAKIR YAHIA: What I saw in her drawings are men with machine guns.

This was a shocking to me.

I think it will be hard for my daughter and other kids to forget what had happened.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The war has crushed already fragile infrastructure and pushed the population into hunger and catastrophe; 25 million, more than half the population, is hungry and with no work.

JEAN-GUY VATAUX, Head of Mission in Sudan, Doctors Without Borders: You have a huge economic crisis.

It's incredibly difficult to make a living at the moment in Sudan, and the public services are all down.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Jean-Guy Vataux is the head of Doctors Without Borders in Sudan.

He spoke to the "NewsHour" from Wad Madani.

JEAN-GUY VATAUX: Food used to be produced, a lot of it in Sudan, and the next problem we will face is crops have been extremely bad for the past year, and all the specialists warn that the famine is looming for 2024 in Sudan.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And joining me now from South Sudan is Cindy McCain, the executive director of the World Food Program.

Executive Director McCain, thank you very much.

Welcome back to the "NewsHour."

CINDY MCCAIN, Executive Director, World Food Program: Thank you.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Let's talk about South Sudan, where you visited today, in a minute.

But I want to ask the overall question first.

What is the state of the humanitarian catastrophe that the war in Sudan has created?

CINDY MCCAIN: The place I'm in today and the surrounding refugee camps have the possibility of becoming the world's largest hunger crisis very soon.

We have saw people, not only refugees coming in, but people that were re-returning, all who had suffered unbelievable difficulties getting to where they're at now.

And, most of all, they have had no food.

And, as you know, we have had to cut rations.

So we are in a predicament now where we have got so many people sitting here.

We're this close to famine, and children are dying of malnutrition every day here.

NICK SCHIFRIN: You have had to cut rations because you haven't received from the international community the funds that you have been asking for, and the location that you visited today, Renk, is where 85 percent of those fleeing Sudan crossed the border.

What are the stories that you hear from these people?

CINDY MCCAIN: Oh.

Oh.

I sat next to a grandmother who had her grandson her lap, and she had lost her entire family.

And the stories that she told and the angst just -- she's in a terrible situation, as were all the other women in the room that I was talking to.

I'm here today to make sure that we remind the world that this crisis is happening and that it's real and that we need help.

We cannot forget about Sudan and South Sudan.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The extent of the problem is enormous.

One in five children at the transit center that you visited today are malnourished.

Are they getting what they need?

CINDY MCCAIN: Well, once they get to the transit center, yes, we can help the very seriously malnourished and those infants and pregnant mothers also.

But it's not enough, because we can't do it for long term.

With our infants, we do try to obviously take care of them much longer, but we need more.

And I can't do it unless the world community steps up and pays attention to what is going on in this region.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The State Department called out both sides of this conflict for -- quote -- "the obstruction of humanitarian assistance."

The State Department says the Sudanese Armed Forces has been prohibiting cross-border assistance, and the Rapid Support Forces are looting homes, markets and humanitarian warehouses.

How big of a challenge does that make your job?

CINDY MCCAIN: Oh, it's huge.

We -- on the rare occasion that we can get a full convoy across, sometimes, things are looted.

Sometimes, they're not.

Sometimes, people are injured as a result of it.

Sometimes, they're not.

We need peace, access and funding, period.

That's what we need here, and we need it soon.

NICK SCHIFRIN: What would it take for you to be able to do the work you need to do?

CINDY MCCAIN: Well, to give you some idea, we're $300 million short this year, and to do the kind of job that we need to be doing and making sure not only that we're feeding, but that we're also caring for those longer-term feeding problems, like with malnutrition, especially with our children or pregnant mothers.

This year, the money has not come.

It's not just with WFP.

It's around the world.

It's every organization that I know of is facing the same funding crunch.

But, with that said, there is a responsibility to this particular region and to these people.

Without our help and without the world's help and consideration, they are going to die.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And this isn't only about Sudan, right?

What is the regional risk if this conflict continues the way it has?

CINDY MCCAIN: Well, the way I have described it and the way that I think -- I will speak directly to the United States, but we have described it as a national security issue, because what you're seeing, with the lack of food, the lack of ability to support, to farm, to do any of those things, people migrate.

They migrate into other areas.

And in those areas, the bad guys are waiting.

They're waiting to do just that.

They will give them food.

They will take their children or they will -- or families will wind up selling their children for one reason or another, just so they can get food.

That's what we're up against.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Program, thank you very much.

CINDY MCCAIN: Thank you.