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On Wednesday, diplomatic optimism emerged for a resumption of negotiations between the United States and Iran, even as military escalation and retaliatory threats kept the seven-week-old regional conflict on a knife’s edge. Against a backdrop of a fully implemented U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and Tehran’s vow to strike targets across the conflict-battered Middle East, global markets reacted positively to signals that a new round of talks could soon get underway.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump told the New York Post Tuesday that a second negotiating round could convene within 48 hours, with Islamabad, Pakistan tapped again as the host venue. Diplomatic efforts to finalize arrangements are currently moving forward through unofficial backchannel channels, Trump added. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres echoed the positive signal, noting that following a meeting with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, he assesses a restart of talks as “highly probable”.

This upcoming round of talks follows a failed inaugural negotiating session hosted by Pakistan last weekend, which ended without any breakthrough to end the direct U.S.-Iran conflict. Senior White House officials previously identified Iran’s long-debated nuclear program as the core sticking point blocking a lasting agreement. Trump, speaking in pre-released excerpts of a Fox Business Network interview set to air Wednesday, argued that Iranian leadership is eager to reach a negotiated settlement. “I think they want to make a deal very badly,” Trump said, adding “I view it as very close to over.” A senior anonymous U.S. official, however, cautioned Tuesday that new discussions remain only in the planning phase, with no official schedule finalized yet.

Pakistan, which has taken on the role of neutral mediator for the talks, remains committed to pushing for a peaceful resolution. Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb confirmed to the Associated Press that the country’s leadership “is not giving up” on its efforts to broker an end to hostilities between the two powers.

Despite a fragile ceasefire that has largely held across front lines, tensions remain elevated around the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, where the U.S. blockade is now fully operational. U.S. Central Command reported that in the first 24 hours of the blockade going into effect, no commercial ships successfully broke through the cordon. Six merchant tankers complied with U.S. military instructions to turn around and return to Iranian territorial waters, though one vessel briefly reversed course and transited the waterway before turning back.

The blockade is designed to cut off a key source of revenue for Iran’s war effort: since the conflict began on February 28, Iran has exported millions of barrels of crude oil, mostly to Asian markets, much of it through unregulated “dark transits” that evade international sanctions and oversight. This illicit oil trade has generated critical cash flow to sustain Iran’s military and economic operations during the conflict.

Even before the U.S. blockade, Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz — which normally carries roughly 20% of all global oil shipments in peacetime — disrupted global energy markets, sending crude prices skyrocketing and driving up costs for gasoline, food, and essential goods across every continent. On Wednesday, news of potential new talks pushed oil prices downward, while U.S. equities rallied to near the record highs set in January, a signal that investors are betting on an end to the conflict that has upended global commerce and shaken the world economy. The fighting has already inflicted massive human and infrastructural damage across the region, with more than 5,000 fatalities recorded across Iran, Lebanon, Israel, and Gulf Arab states, including 13 killed U.S. service members.

In a separate, landmark development out of Washington Tuesday, the first direct diplomatic meeting between Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the United States in decades concluded with productive outcomes, according to U.S. State Department officials. The rare talks came as the low-intensity conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants along the Israel-Lebanon border enters its third month, with more than one million Lebanese civilians displaced from their homes since March.

Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter framed the discussion as a step toward shared goals, saying both nations are “on the same side of the equation” in “librating Lebanon” from Hezbollah’s militant influence. Lebanese Ambassador Nada Hamadeh Moawad described the meeting as “constructive” but stressed that the top priority remains an immediate end to the ongoing border conflict. Israel and Lebanon have maintained a formal state of war since Israel’s founding in 1948, and Lebanese public and political leadership remains deeply divided over any official diplomatic engagement with the Israeli government.

As regional actors and global powers work to push for de-escalation, the showdown over the Strait of Hormuz remains the single biggest risk for a rapid reignition of hostilities that would deepen the conflict’s already devastating human toll and widespread economic damage across the globe.

A devastating maritime disaster has left at least 250 people — a group including both Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi nationals — unaccounted for after their overcrowded migrant vessel capsized in the Andaman Sea while attempting to reach Malaysia, United Nations refugee and migration agencies confirmed.

Details of the incident remain fragmented in its immediate aftermath, but Bangladesh Coast Guard spokesperson Lieutenant Commander Sabbir Alam Suzan shared preliminary information with the Associated Press on Wednesday, confirming that nine passengers have been pulled from the water alive. The rescue, which took place April 9, was carried out by the crew of the M.T. Meghna Pride, a Bangladesh-flagged cargo ship that spotted the survivors adrift after the shipwreck. Among those rescued are three Rohingya refugees and six Bangladeshi citizens, eight men and one woman, all reported to be in stable condition after being transferred to local police in Teknaf, the departure point for the ill-fated voyage.

Unlike coordinated official search efforts, this rescue was an unscheduled act of goodwill by the merchant vessel’s crew, a senior Bangladesh Coast Guard media official told the AP Wednesday on condition of anonymity per government protocol. The capsizing occurred outside Bangladesh’s territorial waters, so the Coast Guard had not launched an official search operation at the time of the rescue. As of Wednesday, the exact timeline of the sinking and the status of any expanded search operations for the hundreds of missing passengers remains unconfirmed.

In their joint statement released Tuesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) outlined the known context of the disaster: the wooden trawler departed from Teknaf, located in Bangladesh’s southern Cox’s Bazar district, where the world’s largest refugee camp is based, carrying a large contingent of passengers bound for Malaysia. The vessel sank after extreme sea conditions — combined with dangerous overcrowding — left it unable to navigate, with strong winds and rough seas causing the boat to lose control and capsize.

Shari Nijman, a UNHCR communications officer based in Cox’s Bazar, confirmed Wednesday that the agency had no additional updates to share beyond the initial joint statement.

The two UN agencies emphasized that the tragedy is not an isolated incident, but a direct consequence of the years-long protracted displacement of the Rohingya people, for whom durable, long-term solutions remain out of reach. Decades of systemic persecution and ongoing violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State have made safe, voluntary repatriation impossible for most of the more than 1 million Rohingya now sheltering in Bangladesh. Within Bangladesh’s overcrowded refugee camps, limited access to humanitarian aid, formal education, and legal employment leaves thousands of vulnerable people in desperate conditions, pushing many to accept dangerous offers from people smugglers who falsely promise steady work and improved living standards in Malaysia or other Southeast Asian nations.

In the wake of the disaster, UNHCR and IOM issued an urgent call for the international community to increase financial support and show greater solidarity with Rohingya refugees and the government of Bangladesh, which has hosted the displaced population for more than six years.

A Seoul court has handed down a six-month prison sentence to 25-year-old American live-streamer Johnny Somali, legally named Ismael Ramsey Khalid, after he was convicted of multiple offenses including desecrating a memorial to World War Two comfort women and violating South Korean public order laws. The controversial content creator sparked widespread national outrage in late 2024 when he uploaded a viral clip showing himself kissing the iconic bronze statue and performing inappropriate lap dance movements on the monument during a visit to South Korea.

Following the release of the clip, Seoul prosecutors formally charged Khalid with public nuisance in November 2024, and immediately imposed a travel ban barring him from leaving South Korea while the investigation proceeded. The conviction handed down on Wednesday adds additional counts of distribution of non-consensual sexual deepfake content, a charge that further amplified public anger over the streamer’s conduct.

In its official ruling, the court emphasized that Khalid had repeatedly committed offenses targeting random members of the South Korean public, all as a deliberate strategy to generate views and profit from his YouTube channel, in open disregard of South Korean legal and social norms. Prosecutors had initially pushed for a harsher three-year prison term, but judges opted for the reduced six-month sentence after noting that no severe physical harm was inflicted on individual victims in this case. As an additional restriction, Khalid will be barred from working with any organizations serving minors or people with disabilities after his eventual release from custody.

The monument targeted by Khalid is one of dozens of similar memorials erected across South Korea honoring the estimated 200,000 mostly Asian women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War Two. Roughly half of these women, widely referred to as “comfort women” in historical discourse, were from Korea, which was under Japanese colonial rule at the time. The seated young woman statue that has become the symbol of the comfort women movement has long been a flashpoint in diplomatic relations between Seoul and Tokyo, as South Korean activists and officials continue to push for full reparations and formal acknowledgement of Japan’s wartime atrocities.

Khalid, a provocateur who has built a small following of around 5,000 subscribers on YouTube through controversial, boundary-pushing content, issued a public apology back in November 2024 claiming he “didn’t understand the significance of the statue.” That apology was widely met with skepticism from South Korean social media users, who pointed to his long pattern of provocative behavior as evidence the incident was a deliberate stunt for attention.

Throughout the course of the legal proceedings, Khalid escalated tensions by openly challenging local South Koreans to physical confrontations, multiple clips shared on South Korean social media showed the streamer being punched and chased through public streets by angry locals. This incident was far from Khalid’s first run-in with law and public order across East Asia and the Middle East. Prior to his 2024 trip to South Korea, he was detained in 2024 at a Tel Aviv protest for making inappropriate sexual comments to a female police officer, before being released after questioning. In 2023, during a trip to Japan, he sparked public anger by making provocative comments about the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and was later fined 200,000 yen (equivalent to roughly $1,400) for disrupting business at a Tokyo restaurant by blaring loud music. His history of provocative content has also led to permanent bans from multiple major streaming platforms over the years.

Washington’s maximum pressure campaign via a naval blockade of Iranian energy exports was designed as a short-term leverage tool to force Tehran into concessions at the negotiating table, but experts warn the gambit could backfire — with China positioned to quietly test the restrictions without triggering open military conflict, and energy markets already signaling growing confidence that a diplomatic breakthrough between the two rivals is within reach.

In theory, cutting off Iran’s 1.5 million barrels per day of crude exports, much of which flows through the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, should send global energy prices soaring. Yet since the US blockade officially took effect this Monday, Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, has defied expectations and fallen sharply, dropping 4.3% to trade at $95.08 per barrel as of mid-week.

Diplomats and industry analysts interviewed by Middle East Eye say the unexpected price dip stems from widespread optimism that both Washington and Tehran are committed to a two-week ceasefire and renewed negotiations, overshadowing immediate fears of disrupted energy supplies. US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that talks between the two sides could resume as soon as within 48 hours in Islamabad, Pakistan, the site of earlier negotiations that ended without a final agreement.

Aaron David Miller, a former US Middle East peace negotiator now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told MEE that the coming days will be a critical test of the blockade’s durability. “The test right now is whether in the next several days we see a return to kinetic activity on the part of the Iranians to challenge the US blockade or US kinetic action against Iran,” Miller said.

The Trump administration has claimed the blockade is already successfully halting Iranian oil shipments, and initial analysis of global ship tracking data appears to back that assertion, according to maritime analysts. On Tuesday, two vessels linked to Iranian energy exports — the Panama-flagged *Elpis* and Chinese-owned *Rich Starry*, a regular carrier of Iranian methanol — drew international attention after crossing the Strait of Hormuz but idling in the Gulf of Oman rather than exiting toward global markets.

Matthew Wright, principal freight analyst at energy analytics firm Kpler, explained that the exit from the Gulf of Oman is the key metric for tracking compliance, since US naval forces are positioned outside the Strait of Hormuz. “We haven’t seen any Iranian-linked vessel transiting the Strait of Hormuz and exiting the Gulf of Oman. That is what we are waiting on,” Wright said. Experts add that US warships have deliberately stayed outside the narrow strait and away from the Iranian mainland, recognizing they remain vulnerable to Tehran’s fleet of drones and short-range anti-ship missiles.

As the largest buyer of Iranian oil, purchasing roughly 90% of Tehran’s total exports, China is the only global power with the capacity to undermine the US blockade. In the aftermath of the June 2025 US-Israeli war against Iran, Beijing has already supplied Tehran with air defense systems and drones, and The New York Times reported over the weekend that China may have also delivered shoulder-fired missiles to Iranian forces. Beijing has denied all reports of arming Iran, and issued a public statement Tuesday calling the US blockade “dangerous and irresponsible” while urging an immediate ceasefire and a return to normal shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, told MEE that Beijing will avoid direct military confrontation with Washington over the blockade, even as it pursues quiet efforts to prop up the Iranian government. “The Chinese will not pick a fight with the US over Iran. They might do things behind the scenes to rebuild and rearm Iran, but not directly confront the US militarily,” Sun said. “The Strait of Hormuz is so far from China, and the geographical distance is a key barrier to any Chinese plan for effective military intervention.”

Still, one senior Arab diplomat told MEE that the entire US blockade ultimately relies on China’s quiet willingness to comply, pointing to a recent precedent where Washington allowed a Russian oil tanker to reach Cuba despite long-standing US sanctions on the Caribbean nation. The diplomat added that Tehran is well-positioned to outlast the restrictions: Iran pre-positioned massive volumes of crude ahead of the blockade, boosting loadings at its key Kharg Island export terminal before the February 28 US-Israeli attack. Kpler data shows Iran currently holds roughly 38 million barrels of crude stored on tankers at sea, much of it already anchored near the Chinese coast, with enough storage capacity to continue production for weeks before being forced to shut down operations. Iran also has alternative trade routes, including access to the Caspian Sea and overland land borders that reduce its reliance on open sea lanes for imports, unlike Cuba, which the US has targeted with a similar energy blockade.

Many foreign policy experts argue the US has based its blockade strategy on flawed timelines and miscalculations. Alan Eyre, a former senior State Department Iran expert, told MEE that the slow-acting restrictions will fail to pressure Tehran into making concessions within the timeframe the Trump administration needs for a diplomatic win ahead of any planned political milestones. “For any sort of time frame the US cares about to inflict pain on Iran’s economy, the blockade is just too slow-acting,” Eyre said. “It’s a short-term tool that will fail to move the Iranians at the negotiating table.” Eyre added that Iran already holds hundreds of millions of dollars in recent oil export revenue, giving it ample financial breathing room to wait out the standoff.

Experts note that if Tehran chooses not to immediately challenge the blockade, it is likely because Iranian leadership believes a negotiated deal with Washington is achievable. Earlier talks in Islamabad broke up without an agreement after US Vice President JD Vance walked away over disputes about the future of Iran’s nuclear program, but multiple regional and US media outlets have reported that the two sides came surprisingly close to reaching a framework agreement. Eyre compared Vance’s walkout to traditional Middle Eastern bazaar haggling, noting that it is a common negotiating tactic rather than a sign that talks are dead. “Vance walking away is like negotiating for a rug at a market in the Middle East. You ask the price, say it’s too high and walk away. But then you come back the next day,” Eyre said.

A key breakthrough in the earlier talks was a US concession offering Iran a 20-year moratorium on uranium enrichment, a significant shift from earlier US demands that Iran end all enrichment activities permanently. Iran has long maintained its right to enrich uranium for peaceful civilian energy purposes, and its late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a binding religious decree against developing nuclear weapons back in 2003, a position Tehran has repeatedly reaffirmed.

Miller noted that the US shift to accepting a moratorium, or temporary pause, rather than a permanent end to enrichment is a major step forward that makes meaningful negotiation possible. “If the administration has conceded to using the word ‘moratorium’, which means ‘pause’ and not ‘permanent ending’ – that’s a significant concession, and you might actually have a negotiation,” Miller said.

Despite the progress, several major sticking points remain to be resolved. These include Iran’s demand to charge transit tolls for commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the status of Iran’s existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, and the maximum level of enrichment that Washington will agree to allow Tehran to maintain. Experts add that Trump faces political pressure to secure a high-profile foreign policy win, and opening the strait to shipping is not enough to meet that goal. “I don’t think the Iranians will agree to a 20-year moratorium, but if they agree to a pause in single digits, that could open things up,” Miller said.

A devastating maritime disaster off the coast of Southeast Asia has left around 250 people, including dozens of children, unaccounted for after an overloaded migrant trawler sank in the Andaman Sea last week, United Nations agencies for refugees and migration confirmed in a joint statement. The vessel, which departed from southern Bangladesh with the final destination of Malaysia, capsized amid heavy wind and rough sea conditions, a disaster exacerbated by the extreme overcrowding on board, according to the agencies.

The Bangladesh Coast Guard told AFP that one of its patrol vessels pulled nine survivors from the water on April 9, though the exact timing of the capsizing remains unconfirmed. One of the survivors, 40-year-old Rafiqul Islam, described his harrowing experience of drifting adrift for nearly 36 hours before rescue, saying he suffered severe burns after being exposed to oil that leaked from the sinking vessel. He told reporters that the prospect of securing stable employment in Malaysia was the key factor that convinced him to undertake the risky crossing.

This tragedy comes amid a years-long humanitarian crisis that has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority from Myanmar, to flee their homes. Since a brutal military crackdown in 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya have crossed the border into Bangladesh, where they are hosted in sprawling refugee camps. Rohingya people are constitutionally denied citizenship in Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority nation, leaving them effectively stateless with no access to basic rights or protection in their home country.

While Bangladesh has provided refuge to the displaced population, dire living conditions in the overcrowded camps, combined with shrinking international humanitarian funding and ongoing violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, have eliminated most hope of a safe voluntary return home in the near future. These pressures have pushed growing numbers of refugees to attempt dangerous irregular sea crossings to neighboring Malaysia, which many see as a potential safe haven in the region.

Irregular migrant vessels operating this route are almost always small, severely overcrowded, and lack basic necessities including clean drinking water, sanitation, and emergency safety equipment. The crossings are consistently deadly: many vessels never reach their destination, with passengers dying of exposure, dehydration, or shipwreck. Those who do complete the crossing are often detained and deported, while many others are turned away by authorities or coastal communities in Malaysia and Indonesia. Most recently in January 2025, Malaysian authorities turned away two boats carrying approximately 300 refugees after providing only limited emergency food and water.

One Rohingya refugee based in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, the site of the world’s largest Rohingya refugee camp, previously explained to Reuters the desperate logic driving these journeys. “People are dying in the fighting, dying from hunger. So some think it’s better to die at sea than to die slowly here,” they said.

In their joint statement, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) framed the Andaman Sea disaster as a tragic symptom of a larger unresolved crisis. “This tragic incident reflects the dire consequences of protracted displacement and the absence of durable solutions for the Rohingya,” the statement read. The agencies called on the international community to immediately increase and sustain funding to support Rohingya refugees and their host communities in Bangladesh, and renewed calls for urgent action to address the root causes of displacement inside Myanmar. As Bangladesh prepares to mark its new year, the agencies said the disaster is a stark reminder of the urgent need to create conditions that allow Rohingya refugees to return to their home country voluntarily, safely, and with dignity.

Three years into Sudan’s brutal civil conflict, a new study from global humanitarian organization Islamic Relief has revealed a devastating collapse of the country’s grassroots food safety net: nearly half of all community-run lifesaving kitchens, known locally as takaaya, have shuttered their doors in just six months, driven by plummeting international support and economic spillover from the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Takaaya, operated by local Sudanese mutual aid networks, have emerged as the last line of food assistance for millions of civilians trapped by ongoing fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since the conflict erupted in April 2023. To assess the state of these critical operations, Islamic Relief conducted a large-scale survey of 844 takaaya across six Sudanese states, confirming that 354 kitchens – 42% of the total sampled – have ceased operations due to crippling shortages of funding and essential supplies.

The collapse of the community kitchen network comes as Sudan grapples with what the UN calls the world’s largest hunger crisis. Data from the survey and humanitarian agencies confirms that 21 million Sudanese – 45% of the entire population – currently face acute food insecurity, a crisis amplified by mass population displacement, deliberate attacks on agricultural lands, and blockades of key trade routes. Over the past month alone, the US-Israeli war on Iran has upended global supply chains and sent costs soaring across Sudan: fuel prices have jumped by 187% in recent weeks, adding further unsustainable pressure on already strained aid operations.

The humanitarian catastrophe is compounded by a growing humanitarian tracking crisis: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced this week that the number of people registered as missing in Sudan has surpassed 11,000, marking a 40% increase in just 12 months. To date, the conflict has displaced more than 11 million Sudanese, with many forced to flee multiple times as frontlines shift; 4 million of those displaced have sought refuge across international borders, and thousands more have been killed since fighting began.

As the conflict enters its fourth year with no sign of de-escalation, international mediators are convening a high-level conference in Berlin on Wednesday – the third anniversary of the outbreak of war – hosted by Germany, the African Union, France, the European Union, the UK and the US. Notably, neither the SAF nor the RSF have been invited to the conference, and no official delegations from the two warring parties will attend. The two sides remain deadlocked, with the RSF and its allied factions controlling Darfur in western Sudan, and the SAF holding most of the rest of the country, each backed by competing regional and international patrons. The United Arab Emirates is the primary military and financial backer of the RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), with exclusive reporting from Middle East Eye last week confirming additional support from Ethiopia, operating from a military base in the country’s Benishangul-Gumuz region. The SAF, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, draws its core support from Egypt and Turkey, and has increasingly gained backing from Saudi Arabia, which is engaged in a regional rivalry with the UAE.

Humanitarian organizations, aid groups and human rights advocates have issued urgent calls to the governments gathering in Berlin, demanding two key actions: ramp up immediate support for local Sudanese aid groups, and hold parties responsible for human rights abuses accountable. “It is imperative that attending states prioritize the needs of Sudanese civilians over geopolitical interests,” said a Human Rights Watch spokesperson, echoing calls from the British Red Cross and Sudanese Red Crescent for all warring parties to strictly adhere to international humanitarian law, amid ongoing attacks on civilian infrastructure, residential areas and humanitarian workers.

Unlike large international aid operations, takaaya are rooted in local communities: most operate out of mosques, community centers or private family homes, and work hand-in-hand with Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) – grassroots mutual aid networks that have led the country’s humanitarian response from the earliest days of the war, earning Nobel Peace Prize nominations in both 2024 and 2025.

For the millions of Sudanese who rely on these kitchens, they are far more than a source of food: they are the only thing keeping many alive. Osama Abdulkafi Mubarak, a chef at a surviving takaaya, told Islamic Relief his kitchen feeds 200 to 250 families every single day. “We usually cook beans ‘foul’ for breakfast, and lentils, pasta and rice for lunch…. It depends on whatever is available on the day. It is very important, it is their main meal,” he said. Mubarak explained that the funding streams that supported kitchens early in the war have entirely dried up. “The main donors who used to pay for takaaya at the beginning of the war have stopped,” he said. “People were more enthusiastic to support. They were willing to help more, but now money is much less, and even people working on the takaaya are suffering because they also have a lot of other responsibilities, and life is tough. I personally think the situation is worse now, especially after this American, Israeli, Iranian war. The economic situation is worse. Overall, it’s worse than before.”

Mohammed Sulaiman Hilal, a community kitchen beneficiary who relies on the service for daily food, called the takaaya irreplaceable for Sudanese civilians. “Without those community kitchens, life wouldn’t have been possible; people wouldn’t have been able to come back to their areas,” he said. “Most people don’t have jobs, life is stagnated, there is no source of income, most people are fully dependent on takaaya. Without takaaya’s presence there won’t be any humans left.”

Grassroots aid groups in Sudan have long struggled to secure consistent international funding. While they received limited U.S. funding toward the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, all U.S. support was cut when USAID programs were eliminated under the second Trump administration, leaving groups almost entirely dependent on donations from the Sudanese diaspora and local community giving – streams that have now collapsed amid the country’s deep economic crisis. Rampant inflation has doubled the cost of producing a single meal, pushing most kitchens over the edge. In Khartoum, one volunteer reported that the cost of one meal has more than doubled in six months, jumping from $5 to nearly $12. In Port Sudan, volunteer Alaa saw her kitchen go from feeding 4,000 people a day to total suspension when funding ran out. “When we had to close that kitchen, it felt like abandoning my own family,” she said.

Islamic Relief’s survey found stark regional variations in kitchen closures, reflecting the uneven impact of the conflict across the country. In North Darfur, where more than half of all children suffer from acute malnutrition, 57% of surveyed kitchens have closed. In Tawila, a destination for thousands of people who fled the RSF capture of el-Fasher, young volunteer-run kitchens are often forced to close for days between the rare incoming donations. Even in Port Sudan, one of the country’s relatively more stable cities under SAF control, six out of seven surveyed kitchens have closed. The only exception is North Kordofan, a site of recent active fighting, where almost all kitchens remain open, sustained by local volunteer efforts.

Iftikhar Shaheen, global CEO of Islamic Relief, called the collapse of Sudan’s community kitchen network a collective failure of the international community. “The suffering in Sudan is a collective moral failure of the international community. Three years of war have created the world’s biggest hunger crisis, and these locally run kitchens have saved countless lives,” Shaheen said. “Their closure now is a death sentence for many vulnerable families. Heroic volunteers are doing everything they can to keep the kitchens open, but they need more support immediately.”

The scale of underfunding extends to formal UN-led aid efforts: the 2026 UN humanitarian appeal for Sudan has received only 16% of its total requested funding, while last year’s appeal received less than 40% of the amount needed to meet civilian needs.