Sudan: Genocide, Starvation, Crimes against Humanity
The world’s most ruinous war is approaching its third year in Sudan while the world largely stands by in indifference.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been ravaged by a civil war between two Muslim forces, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF, led by Sudan’s de facto ruler, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF, led by Burhan’s deputy-turned-rival Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti”).
Civilians continue to bear the brunt of this war: murdered, sexually assaulted, displaced, and left to starve by both sides. Both the SAF and RSF use starvation as a weapon of war and block humanitarian assistance from reaching civilians. Even healthcare facilities have been looted and destroyed, resulting in civilian populations being deprived of basic medical services.
According to “Operation Broken Silence”, an NGO that monitors the Sudan crisis:
- No one knows the true death toll, but a moderate estimate based on available data suggests more than 145,000 civilians have already perished from violence and hunger.
- Nearly 25 million Sudanese —half of the entire country— are facing high levels of acute food insecurity. 8.7 million Sudanese have descended into near-famine or famine conditions.
- Roughly 15 million people have been forced to flee their homes or have left Sudan as refugees. That’s nearly one in three of all Sudanese.
- Nearly 80% of the country’s healthcare system is inoperable and preventable and treatable diseases are spreading quickly.
- 19 million children no longer have a classroom to attend and roughly 90% of schools are closed. This is the largest childhood education crisis in the world.
Sudan is a country in northeast Africa; it is south of Egypt on the Red Sea’s coast. It has a population of around 50 million. It is an ethnically and culturally diverse country with many non-Arab, African communities. It comprises 19 major ethnic groups and about 597 ethnic sub-groups who speak hundreds of languages and dialects.
Why are SAF and RSF fighting?
Arab supremacy and the unwillingness of power sharing are the main motives of both fighting sides. Sudan’s civil war is rooted in its historical favoritism of an Arab Islamic identity, writes Hamdy A. Hassan, a professor of comparative politics and a specialist on the history of Sudan.
According to “Operation Broken Silence”,
- SAF – Top army brass are mostly Nile Valley Arabs, representing the most elite and privileged ethnic groups in the country. The army is fairly diverse with soldiers from most parts of the country. Arab racism toward African tribes exists in SAF, which explains why army units have executed civilians on an ethnic basis as well.
- RSF- Top RSF commanders and most of their fighters hail from Arab tribes in the western Darfur region. The bulk of the RSF adheres to an extremely racist, Arab-supremacist ideology stating that Darfur’s historic African tribal groups must be cleansed from the region and that all other Sudanese Arabs are inferior.
SAF and RSF were allies, but that changed after they overthrew a civilian reform government in 2021. RSF commander Dagalo sees himself as Sudan’s rightful dictator while SAF generals believe that they are the true government. Both sides have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including summary executions.
For example, the RSF forces have reportedly raped scores of women and girls, using some as sex slaves. Their use of sexual violence constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to international law experts. The RSF has also committed targeted massacres of non-Arab groups, especially the Masalit ethnic group.
In April 2024, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights released the first independent inquiry into breaches of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2023-2024. The report concludes that the RSF forces and allied militias have committed and are committing genocide against the Masalit.
On December 19, 2024, Saad Bahr el-Din, Sultan of the Masalit, told the UN Security Council that the Masalit and other tribes have been systematically targeted at a large scale because of their ethnic identity. Masalit are exposed to crimes that include genocides “that haven’t been witnessed in our modern history,” el-Din said, adding that his city was under siege for two months by the RSF, who bombarded the city around the clock from all sides.
On February 15, 2025, “Genocide Watch” issued a statement entitled “Sudan Genocide Emergency: January 2025.” They noted that the war in Sudan has escalated to stage nine of the genocidal process: extermination:
“Rape, gang rape, and sex trafficking are rampant. Most such crimes are attributed to the RSF. In South Kordofan, girls as young as thirteen are kidnapped for sexual slavery by RSF soldiers, who use racial slurs while assaulting non-Arab victims.
“A UN Fact Finding Mission reported that over 400 women sought medical aid for sexual violence in the year between April 2023 and July 2024. The real numbers of victims are likely much higher, as stigma prevents many women from reporting rapes. Many kidnapped women commit suicide to avoid being raped by RSF soldiers.”
Khartoum destroyed
In an interview with Le Monde published on October 11, 2024, anthropologist Clément Deshayes said that “the conflict in Sudan constitutes the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis.”
“The capital, Khartoum, is completely devastated. The majority of bridges crossing the Nile River have been destroyed or badly damaged. Hospitals, except for one or two under SAF control, have been wiped out, as have most schools; the university of Khartoum is in ruins… Most of the industry was concentrated in Khartoum and Bahri, the scene of fierce battles. Most warehouses and factories are burned down.”
Sudan’s government has never been at ease with the international community nor its own people. According to the official website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
“Since gaining independence from Britain in 1956, Sudan’s ruling class has justified its power with an ideology that favors the Arabic-speaking and Arabic elite in the capital Khartoum over populations from the nation’s more culturally, religiously, and linguistically diverse regions outside the capital.”
For decades Sudan’s people have been exposed to violence. This includes three civil wars, 35 coups and attempted coups, various crimes against humanity, as well as the theft of the country’s natural resources at the hands of autocratic governments and criminal militia.
The first Sudanese civil war (1955–72) erupted just before Sudan became an independent country. The war was prompted by southerners who had been promised and then denied the right to govern themselves. Southerners—mostly Christian and animist—fought against the north’s rule and the imposition of Arabic language and culture. The fighting resulted in the death of half a million people, mostly civilians, and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
In 1983, then-Sudanese President Jaafar al-Nimieri introduced new legal measures that removed the southern regions’ self-governance power. Nimieri declared Arabic the official language, and imposed Sharia law over the entire country.
Sudan currently faces complete economic and social collapse. The Arab-Islamic supremacy that the Sudanese regime and Arab militias uphold has devastated millions of lives. Instead of respecting the ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity of their populace and providing a fair, democratic sharing of power and resources, these forces have chosen to commit ethnic cleansings and cause famine, deaths and destruction across Sudan.
22 years after the first genocide of the 21st century unfolded in Darfur, the same perpetrators are committing the same atrocities against the same targeted groups, namely the Masalit or non-Arab groups, with impunity.
Yet, the absence of media coverage, protests, condemnations on the fighting sides and real action to help the victims leads one to ask: Why is there so little international attention on Sudan? Is it because the victims are black or because the perpetrators are Muslim and Israel is not involved? Or all these combined?
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