Sudan is facing “a starvation crisis of historic proportions” amid its civil war, three humanitarian groups have warned.

The international community is failing “to address the immense hunger”, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Danish Refugee Council, and Mercy Corps said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

“We cannot be clearer: Sudan is experiencing a starvation crisis of historic proportions. And yet, the silence is deafening. People are dying of hunger, every day, and yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions,” it said, referring to the debate on whether Sudan is experiencing a famine.

The criteria for a famine include four of 10,000 children dying of hunger every day or more than 30 percent of the population being undernourished.