Sudan rejects IPC famine findings, says report rushed and suspends IPC membership

Ambassador Mohammed, speaking before the United Nations Security Council, said Sudan rejects parts of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report released Dec. 23 and announced that the Republic of Sudan had suspended its membership in the IPC committee.

Ambassador Mohammed said the report was "hurriedly being, publicized, on the 23rd December during the Christmas time, which was an awkward time to us to us. We didn't thought that, such a kind of report would be, released." He said federal and state technical working groups were unable to complete or update analyses because of restricted movement and sieges in parts of the country and that some areas were unreachable by survey teams.

The ambassador told the council the working groups "relied in the data collection processes on the use of phones and social media, such as WhatsApp, whenever available in the state, and the analysis process was done virtually," which he said produced a large gap in information. He said the groups did not collect or analyze data from health and nutrition institutes and that crop and food security assessments were incomplete; he said…