Sudan displacement crisis affects 12 million as world focuses elsewhere

While the world’s attention has focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, Sudan remains the world’s largest displacement crisis, with some 12 million people driven out of their homes.

“Sudan is under the darkest of clouds, a catastrophe that has, for far too long, been met with paralysis by the international community,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chair of the House Foreign Affairs Africa subcommittee, said during his opening statements during a December 11th hearing on crimes against humanity in Sudan.

Smith said the hearing was a global call to action and that there must be an immediate cessation of hostilities between the warring factions.

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“Crimes against humanity — particularly by the Rapid Support Forces — including mass rape, ethnic targeting and systematic looting, must be investigated, and perpetrators held accountable,” Smith added.

The conflict in Sudan has received renewed attention after President Donald Trump vowed to secure a peace deal in the African nation following his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in November. 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, recently said repeated drone strikes on Dec. 4 in Sudan’s South Kordofan region struck a kindergarten and nearby hospital, killing 114 people, including 63 children.

“Disturbingly, paramedics and responders came under attack as they tried to move the injured from the kindergarten to the hospital,” Tedros said in a statement.

Sudan Doctors Network, a medical organization, said the attacks were perpetrated by the Rapid Support Forces.

The conflict in Sudan has been raging since April 2023 when an uneasy alliance between Sudan’s two warring factions, the government-led Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) collapsed following a tenuous power-sharing agreement struck in 2021. 

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Sudan’s army and the RSF had collaborated for years under the previous regime of ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir.

The situation has only escalated since fighting first broke out in 2023 and has not garnered the same level of international effort or outrage that the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have generated.

“The war in Sudan has been one of the most gruesome humanitarian catastrophes in world history. However, there has been frequent paralysis by world leaders and international institutions to solve it, in addition to reduced, fluctuating media attention on the conflict,” Caroline Rose, director of Military and National Security Priorities at New Lines Institute, told Fox News Digital.

“This could be attributed to the fact that, unlike wars in Ukraine and Gaza, there is not a component of great-power competition or regional contestation,” she added.

Rose and other observers of the conflict note that there is inhibited ground access, creating challenges not only for journalistic reporting, but also the documentation of war crimes and testimonies. 

The Sudanese Armed Forces have prevented access to aid workers in territories they control on the basis of sovereignty and have expelled humanitarian workers that had been in the country.

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The RSF has also been accused of committing grave human rights violations and reportedly killed over 400 aid workers and patients in October at the Saudi Maternity Hospital in the North Darfur city of El Fasher. The RSF siege of El Fasher caused at least 28,000 people to flee to neighboring towns, and the UN Human Rights Office accused the RSF of “summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks against humanitarian workers, looting, abductions and forced displacement.”

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Even as the Trump administration works for a ceasefire between the warring factions, the killings continue. 

Tom Perriello, the former U.S. special envoy for Sudan, said in a September New York Times interview that he believed up to 400,000 have been killed since the outbreak of violence in 2023. A recent article in Foreign Policy put the figure at 100,000 in what it called the “forgotten war.”

In addition to the deaths, it’s been estimated by various groups that more than 30 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and around 21.2 million, or 45% of the population, are facing high levels of acute food insecurity.