Despite being widely described as the world’s worst health and humanitarian crisis, the situation has attracted limited and inconsistent attention from African governments and the continental organisations established to respond to such emergencies. Since 2023, this grim reality has unfolded with devastating consequences: civilians have been trafficked, killed, raped, and subjected to unspeakable humiliation. The scale of the crisis is undeniable. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 20 million people are in urgent need of healthcare, while at least 21 million face acute food insecurity.
The World Health Organisation further reports that Sudan is now the epicentre of the largest displacement crisis in the world, with an estimated 13.6 million people forcibly displaced, an unprecedented scale in recent history. Since the war erupted in April 2023, the collapse of basic services has created fertile ground for the spread of deadly diseases such as malaria, cholera, and dengue, while access to emergency medical care, including life-saving surgery, has become severely constrained.
While many civilians continue to lose their lives at the hands of trigger-happy militias, countless others are dying more quietly from preventable diseases, worsened by dire living conditions, overcrowding, and the breakdown of sanitation systems, conditions directly exacerbated by the ongoing conflict.
This article acknowledges that Sudan was already at the brink of total collapse before the war began in 2023. The country’s food system has completely collapsed and can no longer feed the nation. Families are surviving on a single meal per day or less. It is safe to say that more than half the population of Sudan, over 28 million, are food insecure, which is likely to worsen the famine conditions and cause diseases due to a lack of important nutrients.
It is widely reported that more than 150,000 Sudanese have been indiscriminately and innocently killed. Journalists, human rights advocates, politicians, and activists have accused the fighters of perpetrating war crimes in that country.
Women in Struggle
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.
Like in many other countries, Sudanese women have been confronted with escalating gender-based violence (GBV), which has surged dramatically since the onset of the conflict. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the number of people at risk of GBV has tripled over the past two years. This includes a sharp rise in intimate partner violence, sexual exploitation, abuse, and human trafficking, all compounded by limited or, in many cases, no access to support services for survivors.
The economic toll of the war has further delivered a devastating blow to the financial stability of women, many of whom have lost their livelihoods. As a result, countless women and girls are being pushed into exploitative and 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 deeply 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 ignored or forgotten Sudanese crisis
The war in Sudan, which has escalated into a major humanitarian crisis, has largely been overshadowed by global political and military developments in Europe, the Americas, and West Asia (the Middle East). Fewer activists, politicians, and states appear to be engaging with the Sudanese conflict with the same intensity as seen in crises such as Israel–Palestine, Ukraine–Russia, or US–Iran tensions. This disparity may be attributed to Sudan’s limited geopolitical visibility, lower levels of sustained media coverage, and comparatively reduced political and financial attention.
Referring to the Sudan crisis simply as a “civil war” risks oversimplification, as a range of external actors—including Russia, China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Chad, Ethiopia, Egypt, among others—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 various international media investigations and reports as allegedly providing support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), including through advanced military equipment such as drones, in exchange for access to Sudan’s natural resources, notably gold. These resources are reportedly routed 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).
The war in Sudan, which has escalated into a major humanitarian crisis, has largely been overshadowed by global political and military developments in Europe, the Americas, and West Asia (the Middle East).
