Southern Sudan’s famines of 1988, 1993 and 1998: hunger shaped by war

Three crises within one civil war

The famines associated with 1988, 1993 and 1998 occurred during Sudan's second civil war, when the territory now called South Sudan was still part of Sudan. These were distinct crises within a prolonged conflict. Describing them as successive droughts leaves out the armed attacks and political decisions that repeatedly destroyed people's ability to obtain food.

In 1988, Bahr el Ghazal suffered catastrophic mortality. Human Rights Watch's later history cited an estimate of about 250,000 deaths. Raiding, displacement and the destruction or seizure of assets undermined survival, while relief was obstructed. An estimate for that crisis is not interchangeable with a total for the whole war or for a different famine a decade later.

1989 relief agreements and the 1993 emergency

The disaster helped prompt Operation Lifeline Sudan in 1989. The relief programme depended on agreements with parties controlling territory and transport routes. In his later account of the negotiations, participant Lam Akol described efforts to secure safe routes without achieving a comprehensive ceasefire. Aid could reach people in an ongoing war, but its access remained dependent on armed actors' decisions.

By 1993, civilian survival was again under severe pressure. Human Rights Watch's 1994 report documented abuses by government forces and rival factions of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, including attacks, looting and sieges. It also recorded an expansion of relief access in 1993 that reduced child malnutrition and disease. Improvement through aid and continuing excess mortality could occur in the same year.

This is why a single headline number is inadequate for the 1993 crisis. The report's estimate of excess deaths concerned a wider emergency involving violence, disease and hunger. Calling every death a directly counted starvation death changes the meaning of the evidence. Famine mortality often includes infection and the collapse of care as well as lack of food.

The 1998 famine and uncertain mortality

The 1998 famine again hit Bahr el Ghazal particularly hard. Human Rights Watch's investigation identified government and militia attacks, displacement, obstruction of relief and rebel diversion of aid as central causes. Its report explicitly said the number who had died was unknown. The United Nations figure it cited—2.6 million people at risk in Sudan in July 1998—was a risk estimate, not a death toll.

The same institution could therefore criticise failures of relief while arguing that abuses by the warring parties drove the emergency. Humanitarian agencies could move food, vaccinate children and treat illness; they could not make those services secure while armed groups continued to attack livelihoods and control access.

The recurring mechanism

Taken together, the three crises show how famine can be repeatedly produced within a war. Their common features are loss of food-producing assets, forced movement and barriers between available assistance and the people who need it. Their individual chronology still matters. Keeping dates, places and measures separate makes responsibility clearer and avoids using one disaster's statistics to describe another.