Despite being widely described as one of the world’s worst health and humanitarian crises, the situation in Sudan has attracted limited and inconsistent attention from African governments and the continental organisations established to respond to such emergencies.
Since 2023 this conflict has been unfolding with devastating consequences. Civilians have been killed, raped, trafficked and subjected to unspeakable humiliation. The scale of the crisis is stark. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 20-million people are in urgent need of health care, while at least 21-million face acute food insecurity.
The WHO further reports that Sudan is now the epicentre of the world’s largest displacement crisis, with an estimated 13.6-million people affected — on an unprecedented scale in recent history.
Since the war began in April 2023, the collapse of basic services has created fertile ground for the spread of diseases such as malaria, cholera and dengue fever, while access to emergency medical care — including life-saving surgery — has been severely constrained.
While many civilians continue to lose their lives at the hands of trigger-happy militias, many others are dying more quietly from preventable diseases, worsened by overcrowding, poor sanitation and the breakdown of health systems.
Sudan was already on the brink of severe instability before the war. The country’s food system has largely collapsed. Many families are surviving on one meal a day or less. Estimates suggest that more than half the population of Sudan — more than 28-million people — are food insecure, a situation likely to worsen famine conditions and increase diseases linked to malnutrition.
The economic toll of the war has further undermined women’s financial stability. Many have lost their livelihoods, pushing them into exploitative or precarious situations simply to survive
It is widely reported that more than 150,000 Sudanese have been killed since the conflict started. Journalists, human rights advocates, politicians and activists have accused the warring parties of committing serious violations, including war crimes.
The war in Sudan differs from many global conflicts in both form and impact as it disproportionately targets women and girls to instil fear and assert dominance over communities. Rape, sexual violence and abductions are systematically deployed as tactics of war — used to exert power, terrorise civilians and coerce compliance.
As in many conflicts, women in Sudan have faced escalating gender-based violence (GBV), which has surged dramatically since the onset of the war. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the number of people at risk of GBV has tripled over the past two years. This includes rising levels of intimate partner violence, sexual exploitation, abuse, and trafficking, compounded by limited or in many cases no access to support services for survivors.
The economic toll of the war has further undermined women’s financial stability. Many have lost their livelihoods, pushing them into exploitative or precarious situations simply to survive.
Women continue to endure horrific sexual violence in the Sudanese conflict, while the international community has not done enough to halt the daily brutalities faced by survivors. It is alarming that many women and girls are unable to access essential medical care after childbirth, a situation that significantly increases the risk of death for both newborns and their mothers.
The war in Sudan has largely been overshadowed by political and military developments in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. Fewer activists, politicians and states appear to be engaging with the Sudanese conflict with the same intensity as in the Israel–Palestine, Ukraine–Russia or US–Iran crises. This disparity may be attributed to Sudan’s limited geopolitical visibility and lower levels of sustained media coverage.
Describing the Sudan crisis simply as a “civil war” risks oversimplification. A range of external actors — including Russia, China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Chad, Ethiopia and Egypt — have been implicated in shaping the dynamics of the conflict in pursuit of their own foreign policy and strategic interests.
In particular, the UAE has been cited in international reporting and investigations as allegedly providing support for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — including through the supply of military equipment such as drones — in exchange for access to Sudan’s natural resources, notably gold. These supplies are reported to move through regional transit networks involving countries such as Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and Uganda before reaching markets, including Dubai.
- Kgwadi is a political scientist, freelance writer and research fellow at the Middle East Africa Research Institute (MEARI)
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