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INTRODUCTION: CHAOS, BLOODSHED AND A LOOMING FAMINE
On 15 April 2023, the lives of millions of Sudanese people were brutally ripped apart.
In the usually peaceful capital city of Khartoum, as families celebrated the final days of Ramadan, fierce street battles broke out between two former allies, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Bodies piled high in the streets, markets and hospitals burned, and indiscriminate shelling tore through heavily populated neighbourhoods.
As bullets whizzed around their small house on the edge of Khartoum, 23-year-old Gesma scooped up her two young children and ran for their lives. Hitching a lift on a passing car, they joined a stream of terrified people fleeing the city.
Gesma’s husband was out at work in the market, and she hoped to reunite somewhere safer. But she never heard from him again. To this day she doesn’t even know if he’s still alive.
Gesma and her children spent the first nights of the war sleeping on bricks, hugging each other for comfort.
A year later, the war has spread and a tornado of chaos, bloodshed and starvation has engulfed the country. There is a very real and growing risk that Sudan could soon collapse as a functioning state, with enormous regional and global impact.
The war has created the world’s largest internal displacement crisis. Gesma and her children are among 8.4 million people – including 2 million children under 5 years old – who have been forced from their homes. They fear they will not be able to return home for a long time.
A mass famine is imminent, with children now starving to death. Every single day, another 30,000 people fall into crisis levels of food insecurity. Farmers cannot safely access their fields and this year’s harvests are projected to be among the worst ever. The economy is collapsing at a staggering rate.
Much of the health system is destroyed and deadly diseases are spreading. 24.8 million people – almost half the entire population – now need humanitarian assistancei .
Every corner of this vast country is affected. Much of the capital is now a ghost town. Airstrikes, shelling and heavy fighting have turned whole neighbourhoods into rubble and destroyed infrastructure and public services. In Darfur, villages have been burnt to the ground, women and girls raped, and ethnic minorities targeted. Homeless orphaned children now beg in the streets, while others are given a gun and forced to fight. In Kordofan, fighting rages and people report regular intimidation and abductions. In Al Jazirah, a previously peaceful breadbasket region, intense fighting rocked the biggest city, forcing people to flee further east with farmers abandoning crops in their fields and families sleeping along the roadside.
Officially, almost 15,000 people have been killedii – but many fear the real death toll is far higher and mass graves continue to be uncovered. One United Nations report estimates between 10-15,000 people were massacred in a series of attacks in the city of El Geneina aloneiii.
The violence recalls the atrocities in Darfur 20 years ago, when entire villages were wiped out in what governments such as the USA declared to be the first genocide of the 21st century. In 2004, the Darfur crisis became the most prominent in the world – global leaders convened summits, A-list celebrities led huge public rallies, and eye-witness reports made TV headlines and front pages. In comparison, today’s crisis is being forgotten or ignored.
This lack of attention has deadly consequences. A quarter of the way through the year, the UN-led 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan for Sudan has received just five per cent of the $2.7 billion it needsiv. The 2023 appeal ended up less than half funded. Yet, when humanitarian agencies have funding and safe access, aid is saving lives. Islamic Relief has helped more than 600,000 people over the past year. Sudanese community groups are also playing a leading role in the response, distributing food and sheltering displaced families.
Gesma was heavily pregnant when she fled Khartoum, and a few months later she gave birth to twins in a sprawling camp in eastern Sudan. She named them Watan (meaning Home) and Salaam (meaning Peace) – two things that millions of people in Sudan crave more than anything else.
After a year of unimaginable horror, the people of Sudan urgently need more international attention and support.
There must be renewed efforts to secure an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated political settlement. Civilians must be protected. Parties to the conflict must ensure safe humanitarian access to people in need, and international governments must step up humanitarian assistance. As famine looms, the cost of inaction is too grave to consider.