Kerry Bowman teaches Bioethics and Global Health at the University of Toronto. He has worked on several assignments with the United Nations.
Here in the third decade of the 21st century, we are suddenly surrounded by some of the most consequential conflicts of our lives. The continuing wars in Ukraine and Gaza are causing tremendous suffering and loss, and hold grave consequences for the world’s future. Yet, these two wars are not the only conflicts driving such chaos and human tragedy. A profound humanitarian catastrophe is well under way in Sudan – steadily deepened by international inattention and inaction. It would be an understatement to say that the war in Sudan has slid down the international agenda; it does not appear to have even made the list. In my visits to the region over the past year, I have seen directly how much violence and horror we are failing to either acknowledge or prevent.
Sudan fell to pieces in April, 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and its paramilitary, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), broke out into street battles in the capital Khartoum. Fighting quickly spread across the country, particularly within urban areas, and in Darfur it took on an even uglier, ethnicity-driven character, with brutal attacks by the Arab-dominated RSF on ethnic African civilians. The RSF was founded by the former Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir as an Arab counterinsurgency militia. First known as the Janjaweed, the RSF quickly became linked to widespread atrocities. In 2013, Mr. al-Bashir transformed the group into a semi-organized paramilitary force and gave their leaders military ranks before deploying them to suppress a rebellion in the region of Darfur. In 2019, after months of citizen-lead protests, Mr. al-Bashir was placed under house arrest. This initially sparked great optimism for a return to civilian rule in Sudan, yet an eventual military coup dissolved the transitional government, triggering political and economic turmoil.
The SAF and RSF both originally co-operated to oust Mr. al-Bashir from power. Their true interest in transitioning to a democratic civilian-led government was always questionable, and when democratic negotiations faltered a showdown between the two forces emerged. Now, millions of Sudanese people face societal collapse, displacement and the threat of death.
The volume of suffering, fear and deprivation I saw on the border of Chad and West Darfur was staggering – and I am not new to witnessing refugees, traumatized people or war zones. There were women physically and psychologically wounded by sexual violence. I came across hungry children who had lost their parents; they were hardly visible among massive crowds of people struggling for water, food and medical assistance. People reported surviving ethnically targeted executions and witnessing mass murder.
In the face of these horrors, it is stunning to return to the safety of privileged Western society and observe an almost complete absence of attention to such living nightmares. If Western democratic nations are truly committed to human well-being, how can we then ignore one of the greatest human violations and struggles of our time, particularly when inaction will deepen and expand human suffering?
Neglecting the breadth and scope of human suffering in Sudan diminishes us all. By numbers, a strong argument can be made that this humanitarian crisis is the world’s worst. Millions of people have fled Khartoum itself, which has seen some of the most intense fighting of the war, and in all more than 10.7 million people have fled their homes, making Sudan the largest displacement crisis in the world. More than two million people have left the country altogether, adding refugee pressure to the neighbouring states of Chad and South Sudan, already fragile from deep political and economic struggles of their own.
Among those who remain, massive nutritional deficits are affecting millions – an entire generation of children is both hungry and out of school. Currently, the vast majority of people are trapped in areas inaccessible to humanitarian agencies, and rapidly reaching a threshold of catastrophic food insecurity. Recent data suggest 25.6 million people – more than half of the country’s population – are facing acute food insecurity, and 755,000 people are on the brink of famine. Aid groups are both woefully underfunded and denied access. Internet blackouts and escalating food and fuel prices deepen the crisis. Bravely, civilian movements within Sudan and among the diaspora are rising to fill some of these gaps, but far more is needed.
This conflict also holds grave geopolitical implications. Sadly, it appears that to get Western nations and influential states involved in high-level diplomacy, there needs to be a connection to larger global threats, particularly to Western interests. Sudan may be a complex puzzle, but such threats clearly exist. Sudan’s African neighbours and the nearby Gulf States are attempting to manoeuvre the conflict to their own ends, by shifting the regional power balance, in turn risking a broader regional struggle. The United Arab Emirates has been accused of sending weapons to the RSF while Egypt and Saudi Arabia are both said to be supporting the Sudanese Armed Forces and Iran has allegedly been providing the SAF with weaponized drones. The United States plans to send in an envoy for peace negotiations. It is unclear at this time if warring factions will agree and co-operate with this initiative.
If the core of why we help others and strive to end wars is grounded in respect for human life and decency, we are rapidly losing ground and drifting into the dangerous territory of moral inconsistency and indifference. By ignoring Sudan’s massive human catastrophe, we run the risk of accepting a global, general decline in the humanitarian standards we have long fought hard for. We must consider this unacceptable.