The Sudan Flag. Art courtesy of SKopp via Wikimedia Commons.
By Kiera McLaughlin ’26
Global Editor
Content warning: This article discusses state-sanctioned violence.
For over a year, the civil war in Sudan has terrorized civilians and led to an expanding humanitarian crisis affecting the entire nation.
On April 15, 2023, fighting escalated between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces. This has caused more than 8.6 million people in Sudan to be displaced internally and externally as refugees, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. Essential services are also under attack, leaving communities without healthcare options.
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 25.6 million people — more than half the population of Sudan — are affected by the hunger crisis, with 755,000 people experiencing famine levels of food insecurity.
In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, Awad Ibrahim, professor at the University of Ottawa and a Sudanese refugee, defined this war as “the forgotten tragedy.” Thousands are reported to have been found dead, which he believes are numbers that should be multiplied by three to four times when considering the direct and indirect impacts of war.
He explained that civilians, including himself, do not know the purpose of this war. “[Regular people] don’t know why we have a fight, why we have a war … what’s the purpose? … These two groups, what are they trying to achieve?” he questioned.
The current civil war is one of the many consequences of the over 30-year long authoritarian rule of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, the Council on Foreign Relations reported.
During his time in power, Bashir was backed by the National Islamic Front and implemented Islamic law around the country, which exacerbated religious tensions in the nation. This violence led to the independence of South Sudan, the violent Darfur War and the ongoing warrant for Bashir’s arrest, issued in 2008 by the International Criminal Court, because of his responsibility for the genocide in Darfur, according to Britannica.
The Sudanese Armed Forces was the government military under Bashir, while the Rapid Support Forces was the Arab-majority paramilitary group hired by Bashir to provide him protection from dissent and were also funded to fight in the Darfur War, the Council on Foreign Relations stated.
During the interview, Ibrahim stressed how the Islamic government has identified and perpetuated a divide between Sudanese Arabs and the non-Arab, Black African population. He explained that in Sudan, the Arab category is an “invented race” that is viewed as superior due to colonial history, which has led to discrimination and attacks against the Black populations that make up the south and Darfur regions.
He continued to explain that Western media pushes a “dichotomy” of Arabs versus Africans, and explained that this perception of the conflict is false, given the complex history and relations between these populations. “We need to complicate this category of the Arabs. … It’s an invented race. Unless you're an insider, you wouldn’t know.” He said this context is needed to understand the history behind the war going on today.
This is further explained in a reflective piece written by Mustafar Abubakr, a Sudanese-American, during his research internship for the Wilson Center. He discussed how those perceived as Black Africans faced marginalization and targeted violence throughout history based on this misconception of race, writing that “most of Sudan’s population, even top-ranking government officials of the ‘Arab elite,’ are African in appearance, and an outsider would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a northerner and a southerner.”
Bashir’s reign ended in 2019, when he was overthrown in a joint military coup by the SAF and the RSF, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. This movement was led by youth and women, Ibrahim noted, in partnership with the military groups to form a civilian government.
SAF General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo —also known as Hemetti — became the heads of government after overthrowing the civilian government in 2021, according to the United States Institute of Peace. Tensions grew between the SAF and the RSF, which led to the humanitarian crisis that the nation is facing now.
Alex de Waal, the executive director of the World Peace Foundation and a scholar on both famine and Sudan, explained how this war has left millions without access to food in an interview with the International Crisis Group on their podcast, The Horn. “In their different ways, the two principal belligerents are using starvation as a weapon of war,” de Waal said.
Both military parties have contributed to this hunger crisis throughout the conflict by blocking humanitarian aid, de Waal said in the podcast. Highlighting how the RSF has caused mass destruction and violence and the SAF has not permitted humanitarian accesses, de Waal continued, “A nation-wide famine of this nature will leave a generations-long imprint on Sudan, on its political economy, its social structures [and] its national identity.”
De Waal stressed that human rights organizations have been warning the world for over a year in his interview with the International Crisis Group.
“The warnings have been there, we shouldn’t blame those systems because they have done their job,” de Waal said. “No one has been listening, no one’s been acting if they have been listening.”
Response from the international community has led to some aid for the people in Sudan, but according to the U.N., there is an insufficient amount of support and funding for local humanitarian efforts.
On June 14, the United States Agency for International Development pledged $315 million in humanitarian aid for the people in Sudan in partnership with U.N. agencies, NGOs and local Sudanese organizations.
While this aid is important, de Waal explained in his podcast interview that action needed to be taken from the beginning. When asked how aid should be provided to civilians, he said, “there are a number of mechanisms, and really, at this stage all the tabs need to be turned on.”
At the same time, the SAF and the RSF have been accused of “blocking, looting and exploiting” aid by the U.N. With this context, Ibrahim stressed the need for the military groups to end this war.
“It’s a really, really serious tragedy and the international community is doing its best to stop the war, but we know all wars have to be stopped by the people who are implicated in [them],” he stated.
In Switzerland, the U.N. attempted to facilitate a ceasefire between the military groups and provide more humanitarian aid for civilians, Reuters reported. These discussions lasted only a week starting on July 11, with the U.N. secretary-general’s personal envoy meeting with the RSF and the SAF separately, according to ABC News. The goal was to increase humanitarian aid and protection for the people of Sudan. Ramtane Lamara, the envoy, said “The discussions held in Geneva are an encouraging initial step in a longer and complex process.”
Going forward, de Waal called for the U.N. and world leaders to establish a structured way to end civil war and violence in discussion with the International Crisis Group. “Let us agree — in a multilateral forum — [on] some ground rules for how our political rivalries are conducted, in such a way that it does not involve complex catastrophes that kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people, and render states entirely unviable,” de Waal said on The Horn podcast.
To learn more about the humanitarian crisis, the international response with historical context and what needs to be done, listen to the episode "Sudan is Starving. Now What?" on The Horn podcast.
Quill Leonard ’27 contributed fact-checking.
