The war in Sudan turns one year old with 25 million people plunged into a serious humanitarian crisis

Sudan marks this Monday the first anniversary of a bloody war between Army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a conflict that has plunged 25 million peopleabout half of the population, in a serious humanitarian crisis which threatens to lead to a large-scale famine, with no signs that the intermittent contacts between the parties will lead to a peace agreement.

The conflict broke out on April 15, 2023 after months of tensions between the Army and the RSF – now declared a terrorist group by Khartoum – around the process of reintegration of the latter into the Armed Forces, reflecting a power struggle between both groups within the framework of the unstable transition process opened after the overthrow of Omar Hasan al Bashir’s regime in 2019.

The reintegration process of the RSF was a key point of a agreement signed in December 2022 to form a new civilian government and reactivate the transition, seriously damaged by a new military coup in October 2021 that led to the overthrow of the unity prime minister, Abdullah Hamdok. However, conversations between the head of the Army and president of the Sovereign Transitional Council, Abdel Fattá al Burhan, and the leader of the RSF and until then his ‘number two’, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, alias ‘Hemedti’, led to tensions. which caused delays in the formation of said government and finally an open conflict that has caused enormous devastation in the country.

No signs of solution

Despite international efforts to achieve rapprochement between the parties, including contacts mediated by the United States and Saudi Arabia, the positions of the Army and the RSF remain distant, without firm commitments even to allow the safe delivery of aid to the population, which which has limited humanitarian operations.

Thus, the end of the war seems far away, especially due to the statements of Al Burhan and ‘Hemedti’, who continue to prioritize the military route. In fact, the head of the Army recently stated that the Armed Forces will maintain their offensive until control of “every point” of Sudanese territory is recovered and stressed that they will not hand over power to “traitors” and that those who have not supported the The military will have no role in the political future.

10 million displaced people

The war has displaced more than ten million people – more than 8.5 million internally displaced people and 1.8 million refugees in the region – prompting the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to affirm that both Sudan and neighboring countries “face one of the largest and most complex displacement crises in the world.”

According to UN Women, “women and children are bearing the greatest burden of the crisis,” with 19 million school-aged children outside of schools and more than a hundred reports on sexual violencea figure that does not reflect the extent of the cases that have taken place within the framework of the conflict.

Along these lines, the director of World Vision in Sudan, John Makoni, has stated that “Sudan is currently possibly the worst place in the world for a child to live, due to the enormous number of boys and girls affected by the conflict, but also because of the different physical and emotional challenges they face. childhood is literally hungry, abused and traumatized for what he is experiencing and witnessing,” he lamented.

The continuing conflict is reflected in the fact that thousands of people continue to flee the country, including an average of 1,800 daily arrivals in South Sudan, which was already facing its own crisis before the conflict and is currently under “growing pressure” from these refugee flows.

The crisis has also had an impact on Chada country that has received “the largest flow of refugees in its history”, mainly to poorly communicated areas near the border with Sudan, which has caused these people to settle in improvised camps that are “overcrowded” and do not have with adequate hygiene conditions, as detailed by Mur Sarrado.

Refugees have also moved to the Central African Republic seeking safety. (CAR), Egypt and Ethiopiaa country that already hosted one of the largest refugee populations in Africa, which has led the international community to warn that the lack of support for these countries could end up destabilizing the situation in the region.

The onegés ask to activate humanitarian aid and “stop looking the other way”

However, the greatest impact of the crisis is being borne by the population still in Sudanese territory, which is at risk of becoming “the biggest hunger crisis in the world,” according to the executive director of the World Program warned in early March. food (PMA), Cindy McCain, who insisted that “millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake.”

Likewise, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has maintained that Sudan is “one of the worst global crises in recent decades” and has warned that the African country is facing “a colossal catastrophe”, which is why he has stressed that “urgently allow safe access for “Humanitarian aid is a matter of life and death for millions of people.”

The director of the non-governmental organization Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Sudan, Will Carter, has stated that “one year since the start of the war in Sudan, civilians are suffering hunger, mass sexual violence, large-scale ethnically motivated killings and executions”, yet “the world “Keep looking the other way.”