While the world’s attention has focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, Sudan remains the world’s largest displacement crisis, with some twelve million people driven from their homes.
“Sudan is under the darkest clouds, a catastrophe that has been met with paralysis by the international community for far too long,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, during his opening statements at a Dec. 11 hearing on crimes against humanity in Sudan.
Smith said the hearing was a global call to action and that hostilities between the warring sides should cease immediately.
TRUMP ADMIN steps up peace efforts in Sudan as civil war leaves tens of thousands dead
Smoke rises as clashes between Sudanese armed forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continue in the Sudanese capital on April 16, 2023. The death toll in ongoing clashes between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has reached 56, while the number of injured stands at 595. (Photo by Mahmoud Hjaj/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“Crimes against humanity – especially by the Rapid Support Forces – including mass rape, ethnic attacks and systematic looting must be investigated and perpetrators held to account,” Smith added.
The conflict in Sudan has received renewed attention after President Donald Trump vowed to broker a peace deal in the African country following his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in November.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, recently said that repeated drone strikes on December 4 in Sudan’s South Kordofan region hit a kindergarten and a nearby hospital, killing 114 people, including 63 children.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the Africa Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs, held a hearing Thursday on Sudan’s devastating civil war. (Representative Chris Smith’s office)
“It is disturbing that paramedics and emergency workers were attacked when they tried to move the injured from the kindergarten to the hospital,” Tedros said in a statement.
Sudan Doctors Network, a medical organization, said the attacks were carried out by the Rapid Support Forces.
Sudan’s conflict has raged since April 2023, when an uneasy alliance between Sudan’s two warring sides, the government-led Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), collapsed following a weak power-sharing deal in 2021.
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The Sudanese army and the RSF had worked together for years under the previous regime of deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Members of the Sudanese Army’s Special Mission Forces battalion in the northern state hold a parade in the town of Karima on May 19, 2024. Sudan has been in the grip of a conflict for more than a year between the regular army led by de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)
The situation has only escalated since fighting first broke out in 2023 and has not attracted the same level of international effort or outrage that the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have generated.
“This can be attributed to the fact that, unlike wars in Ukraine and Gaza, there is no great power competition or regional contestation,” she added.
Rose and other observers of the conflict note that access to the ground is being hampered, creating challenges not only for journalistic reporting but also for the documentation of war crimes and testimonies.
The Sudanese Armed Forces have prevented the entry of aid workers into areas under their sovereignty control and expelled humanitarian workers who were in the country.
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The RSF has also been accused of committing serious human rights violations and reportedly killed more than 400 aid workers and patients at the Saudi maternity hospital in the town of El Fasher in North Darfur in October. The RSF siege of El Fasher caused at least 28,000 people to flee to neighboring towns, and the UN Human Rights Office accused the RSF of “summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks on humanitarian workers, looting, kidnappings and forced displacement”.
A man walks past a house hit during recent fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, Tuesday, April 25, 2023. Sudan has been torn by war for a year now, riven by fighting between the army and the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali, File)
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Even as the Trump administration seeks a ceasefire between the warring sides, the killings continue.
Tom Perriello, the former US special envoy to Sudan, said in September Interview with the New York Times that he estimates that up to 400,000 people have been killed since the outbreak of violence in 2023. A recent article in Foreign policy sets the figure at 100,000 in what it called the “forgotten war.”
In addition to the deaths, several groups estimate that more than 30 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and that approximately 21.2 million people, or 45% of the population, face high levels of acute food insecurity.
