Sudan civil war: Millions displaced, children in the line of fire as fighting rages on after a year
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Sudan war: Several aid agencies and their workers in Sudan have raised alarm saying that the war-torn country is headed towards a larger-scale calamity of starvation and could see mass deaths because of it in the upcoming months.
One year ago, a war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out in the capital city of Khartoum and the fighting has rapidly spread across the country since.
This was amid the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, and months before the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, both of which continue to rage on, but the conflict in Sudan has mostly been overlooked and the impact is devastating.
In one year, more than 8.5 million Sudanese have been forced to flee their homes, which has led to one of the world’s largest displacement crises, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The war has also pushed millions into extreme hunger, triggered waves of ethnically driven killings and sexual violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, and reportedly left millions of Sudanese children in the line of fire.
Humanitarian situation
Nearly two million out of the at least 8.5 million displaced have fled across the border into neighbouring South Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, Egypt, Uganda and Ethiopia, according to the data by the UN.
South Sudan is hosting most of the refugees from Sudan with around 640,000 people, and 1,800 people are still arriving every day, according to the UNHCR.
“Sudan has experienced the almost complete destruction of its urban middle class: architects, doctors, teachers, nurses, engineers, and students have lost everything,” said UNHCR spokesperson Olga Sarrado.
WATCH | Germany pledges more aid for Sudan
Speaking about the situation on the ground, Sarrado said that “access constraints, security risks and logistical challenges are hampering the humanitarian response.”
The UNHCR spokesperson also noted that the situation for women and children is particularly alarming as they are arriving in “remote areas with little to nothing and in desperate need of food, water, shelter and medical care.”
“Parents and children have witnessed or experienced appalling violence, making psychosocial support a priority,” said Sarrado.
Half of the children in Sudan are currently or have been within five kilometres of the front lines of the fighting and have been left vulnerable to “gunfire, shelling, air strikes and other violence,” said a report by the United Kingdom-based charity, Save the Children.
More than 10 million children have been exposed to bombings, missile strikes, and direct attacks, since the beginning of the war, according to the analysis by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) and the UK-based charity.
“Children in Sudan have suffered unimaginably – they have seen killings, massacres, bullet-littered streets, dead bodies and shelled homes while they live with the all-too-real fear that they, themselves, could be killed, injured, recruited to fight or subject to sexual violence,” said Dr Arif Noor, Save the Children’s head in Sudan.
Sudan, according to the UN, is facing the largest child displacement crisis in the world. One in three has lost school access and out of the 25 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and support, 14 million are children.
Several aid agencies and their workers in Sudan have raised the alarm saying that the war-torn country is headed towards a larger-scale calamity of starvation and could see mass deaths because of it in the upcoming months.
Tens of thousands of people or even hundreds of thousands could die in the upcoming months due to malnutrition-related causes, said Justin Brady, head of the OCHA in Sudan.
“This is going to get very ugly very quickly unless we can overcome both the resource challenges and the access challenges,” Brady said.
He also called on the international community to ask both sides to stop fighting and raise funds for the UN humanitarian effort in the war-torn country. Sarrado also noted that the “funding remains critically low”.
However, the international community has paid little attention as the UN agency which needs some $2.7 billion this year to get food and other humanitarian aid for 24 million Sudanese people has only received $145 million, according to OCHA.
Meanwhile, the food prices in the war-torn country have risen by 45 per cent in less than a year due to less production, stalled imports, and the movement of food being impacted by the fighting, said OCHA.
‘A forgotten crisis’
The “level of international neglect is shocking,” Christos Christou, president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), in a statement.
According to the medical charity, only 20-30 per cent of health facilities are functioning across the country. Therefore, with most of the country’s health system collapsed there have been reports of outbreaks of diseases including measles and cholera.
However, with most of the international community focusing towards the Middle East, and before that on the Ukraine war, the situation in Sudan has significantly deteriorated.
“Sudan is described as a forgotten crisis. I’m starting to wonder how many people knew about it in the first place to forget about it,” said Brady, as quoted by the Associated Press.
He added, “There are others that have more attention than Sudan. I don’t like to compare crises. It’s like comparing two cancer patients...They both need to be treated.”
The fighting that tore through the Sudanese capital after April 15, also spread to Darfur and to the state of Gezira state, which turned into an aid hub where many have sought refuge.
Outside of Khartoum, the western region of Darfur has also witnessed atrocities including killings, displacement and rape. RSF and its allies have been accused of rampant sexual violence and ethnic attacks on African tribes’ areas in the region.
Earlier this year, a report by the UN said that a series of attacks on the ethnic African Masalit tribe killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people in Geneina, the capital of West Darfur.
At least 159 cases of rape and gang rape have been reported in the past year, nearly all of them in Khartoum and Darfur. The head of the Sudanese Unit for Combating Violence Against Women, a government organisation, Sulima Sharifm, said that the figures are just the tip of the iceberg.
Ahmed, 50, who had fled with his wife and four children from Khartoum told Reuters about his ordeal to get out of the war-torn country.
The 50-year-old said RSF troops pulled them from a car as they tried to escape Wad Madani to seize their vehicle and even lost his 75-year-old mother-in-law after the arduous, three-day journey.
He then paid smugglers to come to Egypt. Notably, Cairo had suspended visa-free entry for women, children, and men over 50 after the war broke out and Sudanese poured into the country.
“Because of Al-Burhan and Hemedti, our lives were completely shattered. We lost everything we owned,” he told Reuters over the phone from Cairo.
No end in sight
Over the past year, there have been sporadic interventions between Sudan’s warring factions led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the head of the RSF Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.
In the initial months, the warring sides had agreed on brief pauses in fighting offering some respite to the citizens, but it was often short-lived after ceasefires agreed upon in Jeddah after mediations by the United States and Saudi Arabia, were repeatedly violated and the process faltered.
While Hemedti’s forces have overrun much of Darfur, al-Burhan has moved the government and his headquarters to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.
“Both warring parties have committed serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, amounting in some cases to war crimes and other atrocity crimes,” said Human Rights Watch, in a statement.
The international organisation has called on countries to tackle the “shamefully low levels of humanitarian funding”.
Countries pledge to ramp up funding
The United States, on Sunday (Apr 14) ahead of the meeting of European diplomats in Paris to mark the first anniversary of the devastating conflict, announced that it would announce an additional $100 million in aid for the war-torn country, reported Reuters.
Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, said that Berlin would provide $260 million in humanitarian aid to Sudan, in Paris, on Monday (Apr 15).
“We can manage together to avoid a terrible famine catastrophe, but only if we get active together now,” Baerbock said, adding that the worst-case scenario, one million people could die of hunger this year.
During the conference, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné noted that the Sudanese crisis has been pushed into the background.
“It is obvious that the series of crises - I am thinking of Gaza and Ukraine - have pushed the Sudanese crisis into the background,” Séjourné said.
(With inputs from agencies)