Sudan’s Minister of Human Resources and Social Welfare, Moatasim Ahmed Saleh, said that 20.4 million Sudanese are living below the poverty line and are in need of support.
He added that the poverty rate in Sudan, according to a report by the International Monetary Fund, has reached 71.4 percent.
Poverty levels in Sudan have doubled since the outbreak of war three years ago, with around 70 percent of the population now living below the poverty line, according to Luca Renda, the Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme in Sudan.
Renda said: “When we look at the situation before the war, we find that poverty rates have effectively doubled. Before the war, about 38 percent of the population lived below the poverty line; now we estimate the figure to be around 70 percent.”
He added that one in four Sudanese lives in extreme poverty, surviving on less than two dollars a day.
Days earlier, the World Food Programme described the situation in Sudan as “the world’s largest hunger crisis.”
It noted that more than 19 million people out of a population of around 45 million are facing acute food insecurity amid the ongoing conflict and its economic and humanitarian consequences.
The agency also announced the reopening of its country office in the Sudanese capital after operating from Port Sudan since the outbreak of war, in preparation for a broader return of the United Nations to Khartoum.
