In an article entitled ‘Sudan, the generals’ war – What prospects for humanitarian action? published in June 2023 in Défis Humanitaires, I painted a picture of a country which, since April 2023, had been embroiled in a civil war, the product of a power struggle. I won’t go back over the roots of this conflict, which has become chronic, or over the military issues at stake – these have hardly changed – but I do need to take stock of the humanitarian situation, which I wrote about at the time, and which has only got worse since.
Worsening is, in this case, an understatement, since the UN considers that the country is plunged into ‘one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory’, with nearly 25 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in 2024, according to UNOCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). A crisis made up of multiple crises that intertwine and feed on each other: A crisis of population displacement, a food crisis-agricultural crisis, a health crisis, a crisis of respect for human rights and International Humanitarian Law (IHL)… Finally, a crisis of humanitarian access and international response that has waited, and sometimes still waits, between aversion to risk and legal respect that hampers cross-border aid initiatives, when the involvement of all humanitarian actors, with determination and even audacity, is urgent, necessary and vital, while fighting, massacres and lack of access to basic resources and services have already caused tens of thousands of deaths.
Population displacement crisis
Since the start of the war in Sudan in April 2023, the country has seen the displacement of more than 12.8 million people (the highest displaced/refugee population in the world), according to the UN, which also considers this conflict to be ‘the fastest growing displacement crisis in the world’. According to UNOCHA, of these 12.8 million people, more than 10.7 million are internally displaced (many of whom have had to move again one or more times), while 2.1 million are refugees in neighbouring countries (Chad, which is experiencing its own difficulties and instability, and South Sudan, which is the poorest country on the planet).
Food crisis-agricultural crisis
On 27 June 2024, the heads of three relevant United Nations agencies (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations-FAO, the UN Children’s Fund-UNICEF and the UN World Food Programme-WFP) warned that Sudan is facing ‘an unprecedented hunger crisis’. The latest figures show that more than 755,000 people are catastrophically food insecure (IPC-Integrated Phase Classification / phase 5), more than 8.5 million in food emergency (IPC Phase 4) and more than 16.3 million in food crisis (IPC Phase 3), and finally more than 15 million in food stress (IPC Phase 2), a scale of crisis not seen since Darfur in the early 2. 000, with a total of 25.6 million people (around 54% of the population) classified in IPC Phase 3 or worse. 14 areas are at risk of famine. The worst conditions are in the areas worst affected by the fighting and where people displaced by the conflict have congregated. For more than half of Sudan’s population, United Nations officials stressed, every day is a struggle to feed themselves and their families. Moreover, according to these same officials, this is the first time that the catastrophic level of IPC Phase 5 has been confirmed in Sudan since the IPC measurement tool was introduced in this country. Finally, unlike the crisis in Darfur twenty years ago, today’s crisis is affecting the whole country, including the capital Khartoum and the state of Gezira (long the country’s breadbasket, and since July prey to an upsurge in looting, destruction and the flight of its inhabitants, who are mainly farmers). Cindy McCain, Executive Director of the WFP, lamented that ‘for every one person we have reached this year, eight others are in desperate need of help’…
By way of example, in the Zamzam camp for displaced people (located 12 km south of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and where the WFP has not distributed food since May 2023), in North Darfur, which was home to more than 300,000 people at the start of the summer, 63,000 children were considered malnourished, 10% of whom were ‘severely malnourished’, according to Médecins Sans Frontières-MSF. Since then, and according to a report by experts from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), dated 1 August 2024, the camp’s population has grown rapidly to reach at least 500,000 people… ‘The main factors behind the famine in Zamzam camp are the conflict and the lack of humanitarian access, two factors that can be immediately corrected with the necessary political will’, according to the IPC report. On 7 August, the NGO Action Contre la Faim-ACF issued a press release warning of the emergency in Sudan, and particularly in the Zamzam camp ‘where famine conditions have been declared’, and quoting Paloma Martín de Miguel, head of operations for West Africa at Action contre la Faim: ‘The level of violence in Sudan is extreme. As a result of the conflict, in the El Fasher region, other camps for displaced people exposed to violence are threatened by famine’…
In addition to the catastrophic IPC levels, the harvest issue is an aggravating factor in the food situation in Sudan: the destruction of agricultural infrastructures, looting, rising food prices and the impossibility of cultivating land due to the fighting have resulted in an extremely difficult lean season (from June to September) for the population. What’s more, the rainy and flooding season, which coincides with this lean season, has made many roads impassable, limiting the delivery of aid (we’ll come back to the question of access later). The NGO SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL (which operates from Geneina in West and Central Darfur, with a presence in El Fasher in North Darfur, while implementing aid programmes in government zones in Khartoum and Gedaref for displaced people, and helping Sudanese refugees in Chad and South Sudan), reports that the communities with which its teams are in contact ‘are suffering from a large shortage of food compared with last year, due to the impossibility of sowing and harvesting, the loss of livestock as a result of looting, and a lack of food and care? In many households, the seeds had to be eaten to survive’. Having lost their jobs and their income, many households have reduced their meals to just one a day, with deficiencies in nutrients, sometimes eating tree leaves, selling their possessions or going into debt, becoming even poorer… Fatima, who receives aid from SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL (SI) in West Darfur, says she has been forced to leave her home to work.
Health crisis
Health crisis and health resources crisis. Health crisis: according to Jean Stowell, MSF’s head of mission in Sudan, “Only 20-30% of health centers are still functional in Sudan”. In areas controlled by the RSF (Rapid Support Forces, opposed to government forces), where various armed groups and militias also operate, health facilities and medical warehouses were often looted during the first months of the conflict. Most of those wounded in the fighting, whether combatants or civilians, are unable to reach hospitals, over 70% of which are out of action. What’s more, according to MSF, “Almost one in three people admitted with war-related injuries is a woman or a child under the age of 10”. Finally, while the delivery of medicines is very complicated (access, insecurity) for NGOs like MSF working in government zones, it has practically come to a halt in areas held by the RSF.
In Darfur, for example, where we were one of the first NGOs to return, we found that the fighting had destroyed many water access infrastructures: water networks, water points, reservoirs… In West Darfur, after doing watertrucking (transporting water by truck), we are rehabilitating water networks, boreholes and water points. Even in El Fasher, which is a very exposed, besieged area, we are doing our utmost to ensure watertrucking…”.
Crisis in respect for human rights and international humanitarian law
In addition to hindering humanitarian access to people in need of aid (see below), looting and destroying hospitals, health centers and warehouses, and targeting places where displaced people gather or civilian settlements, the civil war that began in April 2023 has rekindled local or regional (often intercommunal, and has enabled a number of armed militias – often virtually uncontrolled and indifferent to any respect for IHL – to perpetrate atrocities, massacres, torture, abductions and arbitrary detentions, rape and mass sexual crimes. In Darfur, for example, some of the victims of the 2003 conflict, such as the Masalit, are once again the victims of the renewed conflict in 2023. In view of the extent to which human rights and international humanitarian law are being disregarded in the war in Sudan, MSF recently published a documented report entitled “A War on People”, which can be found at the end of this article.
Humanitarian access crisis
Humanitarian access is the key issue in the Sudan crisis. As administrative restrictions on access and the closure by government authorities (withdrawn to Port Sudan) of cross-border crossing points with Chad, such as Adré, combine with the threat of imminent mass starvation and the rainy season isolating entire areas, the debate is stirring the international humanitarian community. Is the international humanitarian community too cautious, too wait-and-see? This is the crux of the matter: on July 16, Christos Christou, MSF’s international president, underlined the urgent need for UN agencies and NGOs to return to war-torn Sudan to help the population facing a major humanitarian crisis: “The UN and its partners continue to impose restrictions on access to these regions, and are not prepared to intervene or mobilize teams on the ground”.
Vickie Hawkins, Executive Director of MSF-Netherlands, recently denounced the fact that essential medical care in Sudan is still regularly blocked by bureaucratic obstacles such as the refusal to issue movement permits or to allow the passage of essential medicines or equipment: “These obstructions add to the violence of the parties to the conflict, and can be as deadly as bullets and bombs, being used to block relief at a time when the population needs it most”.
What’s the problem? At the start of the crisis, Chad took a positive stance towards humanitarian actors, on the one hand by keeping its border open for people fleeing, and on the other, by allowing emergency aid to pass between Chad and Sudan, even though Chad, it should be remembered, is a country also facing difficulties. Since then, the official Sudanese authorities have decided to ban transit between Chad and Sudan, which amounts to a de facto ban on aid (except at the Tina crossing, see below). This official decision applies to all organizations operating under the rules of this state. It was followed by the United Nations, which considered that they were subject to the laws of the Sudanese state, thus opposing NGO requests that highlighted the risk this position posed to the population. In the history of humanitarian aid, and based on the principle that the occupying power of a territory or part of it is not that of the regular authorities, NGOs have been able to get around this kind of prohibition… But, faced with the legalism and caution of UN decision-makers, many humanitarian partners are waiting… Among the major UN humanitarian agencies, the WFP has shown itself willing to move forward, even considering, in the absence of crossborder access, crossline access, i.e. moving from the zone under the control of the Sudanese authorities to the combat zone or “RSF” across the front lines. But the WFP’s concern in doing so is firstly to be exposed to violence and looting in the RSF zone on the way to Darfur, and above all to lose access to the rest of Sudan under the control of the authorities, and where the WFP runs major food aid programs.
At the time of writing, the only officially open border crossing between Chad and Sudan is Tina, in North Darfur. Highly isolated, logistically costly and located in a highly insecure environment (government forces hold the border post, then it’s the RSFs, or armed militias…), it is clearly an inadequate response to operational needs. Even the Paris conference on Sudan held on April 15 (see below) failed to bring about any major change or response in UN policy on the transit of humanitarian aid to Sudan from Chad… And yet, on June 27, the heads of the major UN agencies concerned were themselves sounding the alarm about the risk of famine…
Xavier Lauth, Director of Operations for the NGO SI, sums up the issues at stake and the demands made by humanitarian actors working in the field: “We are calling for a new impetus in view of the food situation in Sudan, which is one of the worst in the world. We need to be able to use all the access routes at our disposal, whether cross-border or cross-line, as long as they work, bearing in mind that at the moment cross-border access is too limited and cross-line access ineffective; we can also envisage routes via South Sudan in addition to Chad. We need more operations from the humanitarian community in Sudan in general, in Darfur in particular, and in the Al Fasher area even more so, which means more food aid, which means increasing and accelerating funding, and respecting the financial commitments made at the Paris conference…”.
The Paris conference: a timid response that lags behind the emergency ?
At the initiative of France, Germany and the European Union, the international humanitarian conference for Sudan and neighboring countries was held in Paris on April 15, 2024. It brought together 58 states, including regional and donor countries, major regional organizations and the heads of several United Nations agencies. Yet it raised only half of the $4.01 billion requested by the UN: $1.4 billion for a regional refugee response plan targeting 2.7 million people in five neighboring countries; and $2.7 billion for a national humanitarian response plan targeting 14.7 million people inside Sudan (a figure to be compared with the nearly 25 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in 2024). However, these figures should be seen in the light of the fact that commitments are not always honoured, and that the funds committed are sometimes funds that have already been pledged…. As Xavier Lauth points out, it will be crucial to ensure that commitments are honored quickly. Nevertheless, this conference will have had the merit of allowing NGOs to be present, to participate, and to highlight, beyond the question of financing, key issues such as access. In an article published in Défis Humanitaires in April 2024, Kevin Goldberg, Executive Director of SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL and a speaker at the conference, summed up its stakes and effects as follows: “This conference comes after months of apathy and silence from the international community. At a time when more and more people are facing hunger, disease and forced displacement, and when the economy and basic services have collapsed, the humanitarian response plan has hitherto received only 5% funding. In this respect, the Conference is a welcome but belated wake-up call”.
Tentative conclusion… On the precipice ?
The humanitarian crisis in Sudan is at its moment of truth, on the brink of a precipice, with the lives of millions of people at stake, and part of the credibility of the international humanitarian system at stake (in this case, marked by confusion, wait-and-see attitude, disorganization and contradictory injunctions). In a context characterized by extreme insecurity and a major logistical challenge, aid operations can only be complex, but absolutely vital… As Kevin Goldberg, Executive Director of SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL, summed up in his article in Défis Humanitaires last April, “Let’s not forget the domino effect of this crisis: instability in Sudan threatens the whole region, and in particular already fragile countries facing their own humanitarian and economic challenges – Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic. This is why a more coordinated international response is needed at regional level”. Duly noted…
Pierre Brunet
Writer and humanitarian
Pierre Brunet is a novelist and Vice-President of the NGO SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL. He became involved in humanitarian work in Rwanda in 1994, then in Bosnia in 1995, and has since returned to the field (Afghanistan in 2003, Calais Jungle in 2016, migrant camps in Greece and Macedonia in 2016, Iraq and North-East Syria in 2019). Pierre Brunet’s novels are published by Calmann-Lévy: “Barnum” in 2006, “JAB” in 2008, “Fenicia” in 2014 and “Le triangle d’incertitude” in 2017. A former journalist, Pierre Brunet regularly publishes analytical articles, opinion pieces and columns.
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Conference for Sudan : urgent need for action
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