The UN sent a mission to the centre of Sudan's civil war. Here's what they found

There's plenty of food in Sudan's most populous state, says Jill Lawler. People just can't afford it.

Lawler, chief of field operations and emergency for UNICEF in Sudan, has just returned from a United Nations mission to Khartoum State, a focal point of violence in Sudan's 11-month ongoing civil war.

In the city of Omdurman, she walked past bustling markets with hanging meats and piles of produce on display. Yet everywhere she went, she says, people were starving. 

"When we heard from the doctors and the caregivers about increased malnutrition rates, and they spoke a lot about anemia as well, we asked, well, why is that?" she told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

"And they said it's because of the price of food, and being 11 months into a conflict that has shut down income opportunities for families."

Lawler and 12 UNICEF staffers toured Omdurman on a fact-finding mission to get a sense of how the war is impacting children in Sudan. 

It was the first UN mission to Khartoum State since the current conflict began, and its findings paint a grim picture of constant gunfire, maimed children and a population on the brink of famine.

She delivered her mission report on Monday at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

The war in Sudan is between the nation's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a group that grew out of the so-called Janjaweed militias, who were accused of war crimes and genocide in Darfur under Sudan's former autocratic leader Omar al-Bashir. They've also been accused of committing mass ethnic killings during the current conflict.

In 2019, the army and the RSF fought side-by-side to topple al-Bashir's government. Two years later, they together enacted a coup against the civilian transitional government.

The army and RSF were supposed to sign an internationally-backed plan to transition the country to a civilian government in April 2023. Instead, they turned their guns on each other, each side pinning the blame on the other.

Those clashes quickly developed into an all-out war that has displaced nine million people inside the country and forced more than 1.7 million to flee, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Inside the country, the situation is dire. The international charity Save the Children said Wednesday there are 220,000 severely malnourished children and over 7,000 new mothers in Sudan could die in the coming months from hunger unless more funding for humanitarian relief is provided.

Aid groups, including UNICEF, have called for a ceasefire to get more aid to those who need it most.