Sudan
As the humanitarian crisis in Sudan continues to grow, its being reported that over 100 charity kitchen workers have been killed in the ongoing conflict.
That’s according to workers who spoke with journalists from the Associated Press and the Aid Workers Security database, a group that tracks major incidents around the world impacting aid workers.
Enas Abab, a 19-year-old from the North Darfur capital, al-Fasher, explained how her father was among them.
She said that after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured the town in October last year, the took him and demanded a ransom.
When the family said they didn’t have the money to pay, they said they had killed him.
“He worked at the charity kitchen from the beginning of the war, he distributed food and drink to people in the camps, and gave pills to those with high blood pressure and diabetes,” she said.
The RSF has been at war with the Sudanese army since April 2023. It had laid siege on al-Fasher in the western Darfur region, starving people out before its fighters overran the city.
United Nations officials only 40 per cent of the city’s 260,000 residents managed to flee the onslaught alive, thousands of whom were wounded. The fate of the rest remains unknown.
To this day, Arbab does not know where her father’s body is. When her husband disappeared a month later, she took her small son and fled north to Egypt.
Farouk Abkar, a 60-year-old from al-Fasher, spent a year handing out sacks of grain at a charity kitchen in Zam Zam camp, just 15 kilometres south of the city.
He survived drone strikes and remembers the day RSF fighters attacked the camp kitchen.
“One of them started hitting me, and when I got up to run away from him, he grabbed me and punched me in the face. Some of my teeth were knocked out,” he recalled.
Abkar said he fled al-Fasher at night with his daughter, walking for 10 days. Now in Egypt, he shares an apartment with at least 10 other Sudanese refugees and can’t afford medical care.
In areas of intense fighting — especially in Darfur — famine is spreading and food and basic supplies are scarce.
The community-led public kitchens have become a lifeline but many working there have been abducted, robbed, arrested, beaten, and killed.
The UN says it is unclear whether charity kitchen workers are targeted because of their work or because of their perceived affiliation with one of the factions in the war.
The kitchen workers are prominent in their communities because of the work they do, making them obvious targets, activists say.
Ransom demands often range from $2,000 and $5,000, frequently rising once families make initial payments.
Despite the challenges, many charity kitchens remain the only reliable food source in areas gripped by conflict and a place people can come to and give each other support.
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