Famine, War Crimes, and Displacement: The Catastrophic Toll of Sudan’s Civil War

As Sudan’s brutal civil war grinds into its third year, the world finds itself confronting a crisis that has surpassed regional confines and now stands as one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of the 21st century. What began in April 2023 as a struggle for supremacy between two military elites, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has metamorphosed into a prolonged war that has devastated a nation and pushed nearly half of its population into the jaws of famine and displacement.

The conflict has claimed over 150,000 lives, many of them civilians, and has forcibly displaced more than 14 million people within and outside the country. According to the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration, this is now the fastest-growing displacement crisis in the world. Humanitarian actors on the ground describe the situation in terms more commonly associated with total societal collapse. Hospitals have been systematically destroyed or rendered inoperable, with over 70 percent of Sudan’s healthcare infrastructure currently non-functional. Attacks on critical facilities, including drone strikes on power stations and aid convoys, have compounded the suffering of civilians, isolating entire towns from humanitarian assistance and exacerbating public health emergencies.

In Darfur, which has long been synonymous with ethnic violence, the fighting has taken an especially gruesome turn. The RSF, a successor to the Janjaweed militia infamous for its role in the 2003 genocide, has been implicated in systematic campaigns of ethnic cleansing, particularly against the Masalit people in West Darfur. These attacks have intensified in 2025, prompting Sudan to file a case at the International Court of Justice against the United Arab Emirates (UAE), alleging that the UAE is materially supporting the RSF in violation of the Genocide Convention. Sudan’s legal representatives have argued that logistical and financial aid provided by the UAE has enabled the RSF to pursue genocidal objectives. The UAE has dismissed the case as baseless and claims the ICJ lacks jurisdiction, although the very act of litigation has already intensified scrutiny on regional complicity in Sudan’s conflict.

Mass atrocities have not been limited to Darfur. In North Darfur, RSF fighters launched successive assaults on internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, including the Abo Shouk camp, which houses nearly half a million people. Survivors describe the attacks as deliberate and coordinated massacres aimed at eliminating entire communities. Local administrators have gone so far as to accuse the RSF of pursuing a strategy of extermination, echoing earlier patterns of violence that marked Sudan’s dark history in the early 2000s. On the other side, the SAF has not remained free of culpability. As its forces retake towns previously under RSF control, they have engaged in widespread reprisals. Civilians suspected of sympathizing with or aiding the RSF have been detained, tortured, and executed without trial. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has explicitly stated that both factions are likely committing war crimes, and that documentation of these crimes is underway for potential future prosecutions.

The humanitarian implications are staggering. Nearly 25 million people, representing over half of Sudan’s total population, are now estimated to be in urgent need of food assistance. According to the World Food Program, famine conditions have already taken hold in conflict zones, particularly in the Zamzam IDP camp, where aid deliveries have been obstructed by persistent fighting. Humanitarian workers describe scenes of skeletal children, mass graves, and families surviving on leaves and grass. These images are reminiscent of Somalia in the early 1990s and Ethiopia in the 1980s, stark reminders of what awaits when geopolitics paralyze moral responsibility.

Despite mounting horrors, meaningful international intervention remains elusive. Efforts at peacebuilding have been consistently undermined by the warring factions’ refusal to engage in good faith negotiations. With the RSF and SAF both rejected from an upcoming international summit on Sudan, scheduled for April 15, 2025, in Geneva and co-hosted by the UK, Germany, and France, the international community appears to be shifting toward a model of exclusionary diplomacy, hoping to pressure new civilian actors into political relevance. However, critics warn that without buy-in from both military blocs, any external roadmap may lack enforceability on the ground.

There is also a significant geopolitical dimension to Sudan’s war. While Egypt and Saudi Arabia have voiced support for the SAF, the RSF reportedly receives backing from actors in the Gulf, including the UAE. Russia’s Wagner Group had been active in the country during earlier stages of the war, supplying arms in exchange for gold mining concessions, though its current level of involvement remains unclear. China, a significant investor in Sudan’s oil infrastructure, has maintained a studied silence, focused instead on safeguarding its economic stakes in Port Sudan.

In the absence of a ceasefire or a viable diplomatic pathway, the situation continues to deteriorate by the day. Academic institutions and humanitarian watchdogs alike are documenting what some have begun to call a “silent genocide,” unfolding largely beyond the headlines and without the level of international attention it would provoke in other regions. The failure to act decisively on Sudan stands as a grim indictment of the global order’s incapacity to prevent mass atrocity in a geopolitically peripheral state.

What Sudan is experiencing is not merely a civil war. It is the slow-motion disintegration of a state, a society, and a people. The international community’s response will not only determine the fate of Sudan’s 45 million citizens, but will serve as a barometer of the world’s collective moral compass in the face of preventable human suffering. If the world fails to act now, it may later have to answer why it chose silence in the presence of evil once again.

References/Sources:-

1. Associated Press. “Sudan Faces the World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis as Second Anniversary of War Nears, UN Says.” AP News, April 11, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/79ad7023ae90b582b877e5dd5acb18e0.
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3. Red Cross. “Red Cross Concerned by Drone Attacks on Critical Infrastructure in Sudan.” Reuters, April 10, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/red-cross-concerned-by-drone-attacks-critical-infrastructure-sudan-2025-04-10/.
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7. Al Jazeera. “Sudan Scene of World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis: African Union.” Al Jazeera, February 11, 2025. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/11/sudan-scene-of-worlds-worst-humanitarian-crisis-african-union.
8. World Food Programme. “Sudan Emergency.” WFP. https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/sudan-emergency.
9. International Rescue Committee. “Crisis in Sudan: What is Happening and How to Help.” IRC, January 2025. https://www.rescue.org/article/crisis-sudan-what-happening-and-how-help.
10. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “Sudan: Humanitarian Needs Overview 2025.” UN OCHA, January 2025. https://www.unocha.org/sudan.