UN Secretary-General António Guterres (left and on screen) addresses the high-level Humanitarian Conference for the People of Sudan, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Credit: UN Photo/Addis Ababa

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 21 2025 (IPS)

In the final quarter of 2024 ,there has been an escalation in the Sudanese civil war, with armed clashes between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) having grown in brutality. Heightened insecurity has pushed millions of people into displacement, hunger, and poverty. Additionally, the continued hostilities have made it difficult for humanitarian organizations to scale their responses up.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued a report on February 20, that analyzed trends in the displacement and violence in the second, third, and fourth quarters of 2024. The fourth quarter was a relatively tumultuous period for the Sudanese people. Extensive artillery shelling in the Zamzam displacement camp of North Darfur has significantly exacerbated the displacement crisis and prevented displaced persons from seeking safer shelter.

UNHCR has classified Sudan as the world’s biggest displacement crisis, with over 11.5 million internally displaced persons since the start of the Sudanese civil war in 2023. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has stated that approximately two-thirds of the population are critically dependent on humanitarian aid for survival. Additionally, internally displaced persons face famine-like conditions and neighboring countries face a lack of resources to provide for the externally displaced.

From June to mid-October 2024, clashes between armed groups in the Sennar and Al Jazeera states greatly boosted internal displacements, with UNHCR estimating that humanitarian organizations had to cater to almost 400,000 newly displaced civilians. In the Darfur and Blue Nile regions, agricultural communities experienced attacks which resulted in significant damage to crop production and a rise in sexual and gender-based violence.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war has increased greatly in the past year. There have been 120 documented cases of sexual violence and at least 203 victims. The true number of victims is estimated to be much higher due to fear of reprisals, stigma, and a lack of protection, medical, and judicial services for victims.

In January, then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that the recent violations of humanitarian law committed by the RSF constitute as acts of genocide. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been accused of supplying the RSF with weapons, which they denied. The United Nations (UN) has still not issued an extension for the unenforced arms embargo in Darfur.

On February 18, the RSF conducted a series of attacks over the course of three days in the al-Kadaris and al-Khelwat areas, which have little to no military presence. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry estimates that there have been at least 433 civilian casualties. There have also been reports of the RSF committing executions, kidnappings, enforced disappearances and lootings.

The attacks were concurrent with the RSF and its allies arriving in the capital of Kenya to sign a charter for a parallel government in the RSF’s controlled territories. The SAF rejected this proposal and indicated plans to reclaim the entirety of Khartoum.

“The continued and deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects, as well as summary executions, sexual violence and other violations and abuses, underscore the utter failure by both parties to respect the rules and principles of international humanitarian and human rights law. Some of these acts may amount to war crimes,” said Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, adds that the Sudanese Civil War has implications that reach beyond the borders of Sudan, “threatening to destabilize neighbors in ways that risk being felt for generations to come”.

Millions of people in Sudan have been left without access to critical resources, such as food, clean water, shelter, and healthcare.

“People who were already very vulnerable have no access to food or water. Some of them have no shelter, as some neighbourhoods have been burned down, and it’s very cold at night,” Michel-Olivier Lacharite, of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) informed reporters. Lacharite added that after the RSF’s attacks on the Zamzam camp in early February, dozens of severely injured civilians don’t have access to treatment due to limited surgical capabilities in the MSF Zamzam hospital.

According to figures from MSF, approximately 24.6 million people, or roughly half of Sudan’s population, face high levels of acute food insecurity. 8.5 million of these people also face “emergency or famine-like” conditions, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report. The IPC has detected the presence of famine in five areas, including the Zamzam, Abu Shouk and Al Salam camps in North Darfur, and two additional locations in the Western Nuba Mountains.

“There are reports of people dying of starvation in some areas like Darfur, Kordofan and Khartoum…People in Zamzam camp, which as you know — as we’ve told you — had been regularly bombed, are resorting to extreme measures to survive because food is so scarce. Families are eating peanut shells mixed with oil which is typically used to feed animals,” said Stéphane Dujarric, the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General.

Despite the urgent scale of needs, the humanitarian response in Sudan has been largely ineffective. According to MSF, heightened insecurity in the most crisis-affected areas has impeded aid deliveries. Additionally, MSF has blamed the UN for employing “neglectful inertia”, which has done little to alleviate the growing malnutrition crisis.

“Parts of Sudan are difficult to work in. But it is certainly possible, and this is what humanitarian organisations and the UN are supposed to do,” said Marcella Kraay, MSF emergency coordinator in Nyala, South Darfur. “In places that are easier to access, as well as in the hardest to reach areas like North Darfur, options like air routes remain unexplored. The failure to act is a choice, and it’s killing people.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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