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While the world’s attention has been focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, Sudan remains the the world’s biggest displacement crisiswith about 12 million people driven from their homes.
“Sudan is under the darkest of clouds, a catastrophe that, for too long, has been met with paralysis by the international community,” Rep. Chris Smith, RNJ, chairman of the Africa Foreign Affairs subcommittee, said during his opening statement during a Dec. 11 hearing on crimes against humanity in Sudan.
Smith said the hearing was a global call to action and that there must be an immediate cessation of hostilities between the warring factions.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATOR CUTS SUDAN PEACE EFFORTS PUBLICIZES CIVIL WAR LEAVES TENS OF THOUSANDS DEAD
Smoke rises as clashes continue in the Sudanese capital on April 16, 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The death toll in ongoing clashes between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has reached 56, while 595 have been injured. (Photo by Mahmoud Hjaj/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“Crimes against humanity – particularly by Rapid Support Forces – including mass rape, ethnic targeting and systematic looting, it must be investigated, and the perpetrators held accountable,” Smith added.
The conflict in Sudan received new attention after President Donald Trump promised to secure a peace agreement in the African nation after his meeting with Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman in November.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, recently said that repeated drone strikes on December 4 in Sudan’s South Kordofan region hit a kindergarten and a nearby hospital, killing 114 people, including 63 children.
Representative Chris Smith, RNJ, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, held a hearing on Sudan’s devastating civil war on Thursday. (Office of Rep. Chris Smith)
“Disturbingly, paramedics and responders came under attack as they tried to move the injured from the kindergarten to the hospital,” Tedros said in a statement.
Sudan Doctors Network, a medical organization, said the attacks were carried out by the Rapid Support Forces.
The conflict in Sudan has been ongoing since April 2023, when an uneasy alliance between Sudan’s two warring factions, the government-led Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) collapsed after a tenuous power-sharing agreement signed in 2021.
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Sudan’s military and the RSF collaborated for years under the previous regime of deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Members of the Special Mission Forces battalion of the Sudanese army in the Northern State hold a parade in the city of Karima on May 19, 2024. Sudan has been in conflict for more than a year between the regular army led by the de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)
The situation has only escalated since the fighting broke out in 2023 and has not gained the same level of international effort or outrage that the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have generated.
“The war in Sudan has been one of the most terrible humanitarian catastrophes in world history. However, there has been frequent paralysis by world leaders and international institutions to solve it, in addition to reduced and fluctuating media attention on the conflict,” Caroline Rose, director of Military and National Security Priorities at the New Lines Institute, told Fox News Digital.
“This could be attributed to the fact that, unlike the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, there is no component of great power competition or regional contestation,” he added.
Rose and other observers of the conflict note that access to land is prevented, which creates challenges not only for journalistic reporting, but also the documentation of war crimes and testimonies.
The Sudanese armed forces prevented access to aid workers in territories controlled on the basis of sovereignty and expelled humanitarian workers who had been in the country.
The RSF has also been accused of committing serious human rights violations and killed more than 400 workers and patients in October at the Saudi Maternity Hospital in the town of El Fasher in North Darfur. U RSF siege of El Fasher caused at least 28,000 people to flee to neighboring countries, and the UN Human Rights Office accused RSF of “summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks against humanitarian workers, looting, abductions and forced displacements”.
A man walks from a house hit in the recent fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, Tuesday, April 25, 2023. Sudan has been torn by war for a year, torn by fighting between the army and the notorious Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali, File)
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Even as the Trump administration works for a ceasefire between the warring factions, the killings continue.
Tom Perriello, the former US special envoy for Sudan, said in September New York Times interview he believed up to 400,000 would be killed by the outbreak of violence in 2023. A recent article in Foreign Policy put the figure at 100,000 in what he called the “forgotten war.”
In addition to the deaths, various groups have estimated that more than 30 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and about 21.2 million, or 45% of the population, are facing high levels of acute food insecurity.
