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The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is to decide whether to charge Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, with genocide against non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur.

The decision, expected on Wednesday, follows the Netherlands-based court's indictment last year of al-Bashir on seven charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

ICC judges decided last March against charging al-Bashir with genocide due to a lack of evidence.

But Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC's chief prosecutor, appealed that decision in July, arguing that prosecuting al-Bashir for genocide did not depend exclusively on whether it could be proved that the Sudanese head of state had genocidal intentions.

Sudan's government has persistently denied the accusations, and al-Bashir has said the warrant against him is "all lies". He also says the ICC has little power to enforce the arrest warrant.

Al-Bashir is the first acting head of state to be indicted by the ICC, and is the most senior figure pursued by the court in The Hague since its inception in 2002.

'Weak' position

The Arab League last year issued a statement rejecting al-Bashir's indictment, while the African Union has said it will no longer co-operate with the ICC over the arrest warrant.

Hassan Meki, the chancellor of the International African University in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, says the ICC currently finds itself in a very weak position.

"The African Union is behind Bashir, the Arab [League] is behind Bashir, and countries of the Non-Aligned [Movement] are behind Bashir," he told Al Jazeera.

"They think this is a vague and a false accusation against a legitimage president, and they think that at this time, something like that will disturb the process of democratisation [in Sudan]. And Africa needs peace - not more problems, not more wars, not more tests."

According to UN estimates, around 35,000 people have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region since 2003, a further 300,000 have died from hunger and disease, and some 2.7 million were displaced.

However, the Sudanese government puts the number of people killed in the violence around 10,000.

Millions hungry

The United Nations, meanwhile, has announced that the number of Sudanese in need of food aid has spiked this year, as compared to last year number's of 4.3 million needy.

Around 11 million people are now reportedly in need of food aid across Sudan, with around half of all South Sudanese going hungry.

The UN has cited drought and tribal conflicts as causing the crisis.

The UN's World Food Programme is also facing a total deficit of $485 million needed to fund food aid this year.