14 months of conflict, tens of thousands of deaths, 10 million refugees and no concrete solution

The civil war in Sudan, which began in April 2023, has cost the lives of 14,000 people, but this war has also forced 10 million people to flee and plunged 30 million Sudanese citizens into food insecurity.

The numbers of this war are terrifying, but what is even more terrifying is that no resolution has succeeded in calming the fighting. Calls for help ring in the void and weapons and ammunition continue to be delivered massively to the Sudanese Armed Forces led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, as well as to the Rapid Support Force of Mohamed Hamdane Daglo.

These two generals and enemies are each blocking the distribution of aid to the populations. The Sudanese situation should be at the center of concerns since it is the most serious humanitarian crisis on the planet today, but it is overshadowed by wars considered priorities in the eyes of the great powers.

Concerns focus in particular on the city of El Fasher, the capital of the Darfur region, surrounded since April 2024. The last Security Council resolution vote of June 13, 2024 demanded an end to this siege. Two million inhabitants are isolated, deprived of everything and under pressure from fighters loyal to General Daglo.

The day after the vote, fighting intensified around El Fasher while the American ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has been alarmed for weeks about the danger for civilian populations in this area. “This is the brutal reality facing millions of people in El Fasher, a population on the verge of a large-scale massacre, she says. History is repeating itself today in Darfur, in the worst possible way and an attack on El Fasher would be one disaster on top of another.”

The United Nations estimates that the attack on El Fasher would cause the flight of at least 500,000 additional Sudanese, while there are already 10 million on the roads, left to their own devices. Some have managed to find refuge in Chad, others in Egypt where the authorities are starting to push them back and half of them are already suffering from starvation.

The United States has just released $350 million urgently. Other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, have also decided to make a gesture, but in the end, it is only a drop in the bucket. Only 16% of the humanitarian aid needed for this crisis is funded today and this scenario is reminiscent of that of Ethiopia in 1984, the worst humanitarian crisis of the 20th century, where famine caused the death of 2 million people.