(The Conversation) – The ongoing war in Sudan has often been overlooked amid higher-profile conflicts raging across multiple continents. Yet the lack of media and geopolitical attention to this 18-month-long conflict has not made its devastation in terms of human lives any less stark.

Since fighting broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, both of which had been part of a power-sharing military government, the country has seen the displacement of more than 14 million people and the carving up of the country by geography and ideology.

And while we may never know the exact death toll, the conflict in Sudan is certainly among the deadliest in the world today.

As scholars of public health, conflict and human rights and Sudanese-American health workers, we are keenly aware of how fraught it can be to estimate mortality in war for a slew of practical and political reasons. But such estimates are of critical importance: They allow us to understand and compare conflicts, target humanitarian aid for those still at risk, trigger investigations of war crimes, bear witness to conflict and compel states and armed groups to intervene or change.

The difficult work of counting the dead

A profound humanitarian crisis is occurring in Sudan, characterized by ethnic cleansing, mass displacement, food scarcity and the spread of disease, complicated further by flooding in the northern states.

Considering a death toll in such a conflict includes counting not only those who are killed as a direct result of violence – itself a difficult thing to determine in real time – but also those who have died by conflict-exacerbated factors, such as the absence of emergency care, the breakdown of vaccination programs and a lack of essential food and medicine. Estimating this latter death toll, called indirect mortality, presents its own challenge, as the definition itself varies among researchers.

In congressional testimony, U.S. special envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello recognized the estimation challenges when noting there had been anywhere between 15,000 and 150,000 deaths in Sudan – an exceedingly wide range that was attributable, in part, to the complexity of determining indirect mortality.

Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), a nonprofit specializing in conflict-related data collection, has recorded an average of more than 1,200 direct conflict deaths per month in Sudan, with nearly 19,000 deaths in the first 15 months of the conflict. This figure is similar to the 20,000 deaths estimated by the Sudan Doctors Union and the 19,000 figure used by the Sudan Protection Cluster, a centralized group of U.N. agencies and NGOs that used World Health Organization data.

ACLED sources its estimates of deaths from traditional media, reports from international NGOs and local observers, supplemented by new media such as verified Telegram and WhatsApp accounts. The Sudan Doctors Union, on the other hand, gives on-the-ground estimates of conflict deaths.

When available, distinct data sources such as surveys, civil registers and official body counts can make an estimation more accurate. However, this data is often available only in retrospect, after the cessation of conflict. It is therefore critical to use both the available data and precedents from previous conflicts to capture a reasonable estimate of the human costs of an ongoing conflict.

A 2010 article in The Lancet estimated that there are 2.3 indirect deaths for every direct conflict death, based on data from 24 small-scale surveys conducted in Darfur from 2003 to 2005. As such, using ACLED’s data of 18,916 direct deaths, we estimate that in the current Sudan conflict, there are an additional 43,507 indirect deaths – or more than 62,000 total deaths.

We believe our estimate is very conservative. When estimating mortality in the ongoing conflict in Gaza, a different group of scholars, also writing in The Lancet, used a multiplier of four indirect deaths for every direct death to estimate the overall mortality there.

Meanwhile, a report from the Geneva Declaration Secretariat showed an average of 5.8 indirect deaths for every direct death across 13 armed conflicts from 1974 to 2007.

Using that latter multiplier, the number of indirect deaths in Sudan would jump to nearly 110,000 – meaning the total deaths in the region amount to 130,000 – double our estimate.

This range is wide, but it acknowledges how difficult it can be to estimate indirect deaths and how they can vary significantly with the shape of a conflict.

The Sudanese conflict in context

For all the tremendous loss of life these numbers reflect, they surely underestimate the true human costs of the conflict.

Sudan already had a fragile and underfunded health system before the fighting started. And compared with other ongoing conflicts such as in Gaza and Ukraine, there was already a more precarious baseline, with higher child mortality and lower life expectancy.

Since the war in Sudan began, there have been consistent reports of mass killings, forced disappearances, sexual violence, deliberate blocking of food and medicine, and other forms of violence against civilians.

Much of the violence is ethnically targeted, and the Darfur region – where a full-scale famine has been declared – has suffered disproportionately.

The destruction of civilian infrastructure and interrupted aid mechanisms are preventing medicine, food, clean water and vaccinations from getting to in-need populations.

Health care workers and facilities, not only in at-risk Darfur but also throughout the country, have been the target of attacks. Nearly 80% of medical facilities have been rendered inoperable. And at least 58 physicians have been killed, in addition to the many that were targeted in previous crises.

Given the persistent targeting of health care systems and restricted access to humanitarian corridors, indirect deaths in Sudan are likely to grow as hospitals shut down, even in the capital Khartoum, due to bombardments, ground attacks and a lack of critical supplies.

The costs for Sudanese children are especially alarming. Thirteen children die per day in Zamzam camp in North Darfur, according to Doctors Without Borders, mostly due to undernutrition and food scarcity.

And nearly 800,000 Sudanese children will face severe, acute malnutrition through 2024, a condition that requires intensive care and supplemental nutrition merely to prevent death. Even before the conflict, children were severely threatened by a lack of access to care, including basic preventive care such as early immunization.

“Refugees,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024

Finally, the transmission of communicable diseases thrives in conflicts like the one in Sudan, where there has been widespread population displacement, malnutrition, limited water and sanitation, and lack of appropriate sheltering. In August, a cholera outbreak led to a spiking death rate of more than 31 deaths per 1,000 cholera cases. And instances of such disease effects are likely underestimates in a country lacking health care penetration and monitoring.

The limitations of estimations

The massive internal displacement of more than 14 million people in Sudan complicates the estimation of death tolls, as shifting populations make establishing baselines nearly impossible.

Moreover, there is typically a dearth of official information collected and released during conflicts.

So establishing a concrete estimate of the true impact of armed conflict often comes after the cessation of hostilities, when expert teams are able to conduct field studies.

Even then, estimates will require assumptions about direct deaths, indirect-to-direct death ratio and the quality of existing data.

But as scholars working at the intersection of public health and human rights, we believe such work, however imperfect, is necessary for the documentation of conflict – and its future prevention. And while there are many current global conflicts that require our urgent attention, the conflict in Sudan must not be lost in the mix.

_Editor’s note: Israa Hassan, a physical medicine and rehabilitation resident at Texas Rehabilitation Hospital-Fort Worth and advocacy director at the Sudanese American Physicians Association, contributed to this article.

Sarah Elizabeth Scales, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Department of Environmental, Occupational, and Agricultural Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center; Blake Erhardt-Ohren, DrPH Candidate, University of California, Berkeley; Debarati Guha Sapir, Professor of Public Health, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain); Khidir Dalouk, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, and Rohini J Haar, Faculty, Epidemiology Division, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – Sudan’s war runs grimly on. The two main protagonists (though there are others involved) are each claiming local victories. The Sudanese army appears to be slowly regaining control of the ruined capital, Khartoum, and has recovered some ground it lost elsewhere in Sudan. And the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues its brutal siege of the western city of El Fasher.

But, while the army seems to have the upper hand at present, neither they nor the RSF looks likely to win outright. Instead, the two sides keep up a mutual battering with ill-aimed barrages of artillery fire and bombs that destroy markets, wreck hospitals, and each day add to the grim toll of civilian death and misery.

Abdel-Fattah al Burhan, the general who seized power and derailed what was supposed to be a transition to civilian rule after the revolution of 2019, still insists he is the head of Sudan’s legitimate government, and that the army will win the war.

The RSF’s leader, Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who is referred to as Hemedti, had initially been willing to play deputy to Burhan, but is now his bitter enemy. He makes a show of being willing to negotiate, but relentlessly pursues a military victory.

It is tempting to point the finger at actors outside Sudan for their part in the spiralling violence. There are multiple credible allegations that the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and Russia have all helped arm or finance one side or other in pursuit of regional influence or economic gain. Libya’s eastern – but not internationally recognised – government has also been accused of complicity.

Some would say there are sins of omission as well as commission. The US, EU and others have all called for an end to this war. But they could be doing more to stop the flow of weapons and money that helps keep the fighting going, and to mobilise more concerted action to protect civilians.

The world stands accused of turning its back on Sudan, despite being its biggest hunger and displacement crisis. But external actors did not start the war, and they cannot simply end it.

Despite their common cause in a counter-revolutionary coup in 2021, the war started when Burhan and Hemedti fell out over who would have military and political primacy – and the associated economic benefits – in Sudan.

They’ve already decided the country isn’t big enough for the both of them, so it’s nigh-on impossible to negotiate the usual kind of deal that shares power between foes.

Burhan is intensely sensitive about the fragile sovereignty of his government, and views external mediation as foreign meddling. He has always insisted that the army can win an outright victory, and now he is encouraged by recent gains. Yet he is a long way from regaining control of the whole country.

“Burhan at War,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Hemedti, who craves the status that would come from negotiations, makes grandiloquent offers of ceasefires, coupled with promises to respect human rights – all while the RSF continues to murder, rape and loot. Hubris and hypocrisy make poor bases for negotiation.

A precarious balancing act

This is also not a war simply being waged between two individuals. Neither the army nor the RSF are coherent or well disciplined – the RSF, in particular, is a messy constellation of armed men, mostly from western Sudan (and, allegedly, further afield). They share a distinctive style of camouflage dress and a sense of long-term exclusion, but are not under close or effective control.

The army has more formal structures – too many, perhaps – but these are also fragmented. Strong on generals and air firepower but weak on fighting forces, the army is adapting the government’s old playbook of mobilising local militias.

The war has become several wars, drawing in other armed groups whose alliances with either the army or the RSF are contingent or opportunistic.

Since independence in 1956, Sudan has mostly been a militarised state, where power was won by force. Those who ruled it feared their fellow soldiers and so created alternative forces, hoping these would back them against potential coups. Some of these groups had distinct social bases in particular regions or ethnic groups.

This fragmentation had been happening since the 1970s, but it became endemic during the long reign of Sudan’s former president, Omar al-Bashir. Bashir stayed in power for 30 years by dividing possible rivals within the ruling elite, and used the multiplying, competing arms of the “security forces” to fight rebels on the margins.

What seemed like a powerful, authoritarian system was, in fact, a brutal but precarious balancing act. After Bashir fell in 2019, the transitional government floundered. The soldiers seized power, then the complex rivalries and institutional fragmentation proved unsustainable. The core institutions that held Sudan together have shattered.

So who, if anyone, can put Sudan back together again? Burhan and Hemedti are in no mood, and may anyway lack the control of their followers needed for any deal to stick.

Civilian politicians were discredited by the bickering of the transition, and the most prominent of them seem confused between claiming to be a government-in-exile or trying to build a bigger anti-war coalition.

At present, Sudan faces either the long-term absence of central authority or, more dramatically, an effective division into two or more states, whether or not these are internationally recognised. Some might say we should not mourn this – Sudan was a colonial creation, made by violence and predation. But this is an outcome that may only increase misery and misrule.

However, there is still resistance amid the ruination. Sudan’s post-Bashir transition to democracy, as envisaged by the UN and others, is long dead. But in some vital ways, the popular revolution that toppled Bashir lives on.

Grassroots emergency response rooms organise whatever lifesaving support for desperate communities that they can. And women and youth – the revolution’s vanguard – continue to organise, agitate and debate Sudan’s future among themselves, as well as demand a role in making it. They deserve our solidarity.

Many, both Sudanese and non-Sudanese, refuse to let go of the idea of a better Sudan that has never yet been realised, but just might rise up from these ashes.

Justin Willis, Professor of History, Durham University and Sharath Srinivasan, David and Elaine Potter Professor, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – In September 2024, the United Nations’ independent fact-finding mission to Sudan issued its first report. Citing grave human rights violations amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity, the report called for the immediate deployment of an independent and impartial force to protect civilians.

Nearly 18 months after the outbreak of fighting, the humanitarian situation in Sudan has become dire, with nearly 25 million people in need of assistance. Is the deployment of a peacekeeping presence to protect civilians feasible or even advisable? Jenna Russo, whose research focuses on the protection of civilians in armed conflict settings and the UN’s contribution to peace processes, shares her insights.

Would it be a good idea to deploy peacekeepers in Sudan again?

The United Nations’ (UN) and African Union’s (AU) efforts to broker peace in Sudan since the outbreak of war in April 2023 have focused on achieving a ceasefire. So far they have been unsuccessful.

Calls to address civilians’ immediate security concerns are increasing. While communities have done much to facilitate self-protection, they continue to be targeted and more needs to be done.

For many years, Sudan had a peacekeeping presence. From 2007 to 2020, the UN and AU jointly led a hybrid peacekeeping presence in Darfur. This was followed by a UN-led political mission. However, since the latter’s sudden exit in February 2024, there has been no regional or international presence in Sudan responsible for protecting civilians.

It’s important to state that (almost) no one is suggesting the deployment of a full-scale, multidimensional peacekeeping operation. Rather, some – including the UN’s independent fact-finding mission – are calling for a more limited deployment of security forces to protect civilians. Sudanese authorities, however, have rejected this recommendation.

Providing widespread protection across Sudan is likely unfeasible given the size of the country and the intensity of the fighting. But it may be possible to provide more targeted protection.

This could include the creation of “green zones” to protect areas where displaced persons are sheltering and facilitate humanitarian aid, which is critical given the risk of famine. A regional or international security presence could also monitor rights violations and support local self-protection efforts.

What would a successful deployment require?

While the gravity of the situation in Sudan is clear, there are barriers to deploying a protection or broader peacekeeping mission.

First, it’s not clear who would lead the mission. Less than a year ago, Sudanese authorities kicked out the UN-led political mission, citing its ineffectiveness in supporting the political transition and protecting civilians. Most stakeholders are pessimistic that the warring parties will agree to another UN-led mission, which is a pre-condition for UN peace operations.

Some have questioned whether the consent of the Sudanese authorities is required, given their role in leading the 2021 coup. However, the UN has learned hard lessons from deployments where consent is lacking (including, recently, Mali). Thus, the UN security council is unlikely to approve a mission that would be resisted by the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces and could lead to additional attacks on civilians and peacekeepers.

This raises the question of whether the AU could deploy a protection mission. The AU is also involved in trying to support the political process. While it’s not clear that either party would consent to an AU-led presence, it’s more viable than a UN-led mission.

Because of this, some have suggested that Sudan could be a test case for resolution 2719, which was unanimously adopted by the UN security council in December 2023. It allows AU-led peace support operations to receive UN funding on a case-by-case basis.

The resolution is primarily understood as providing support for peace enforcement (as opposed to peacekeeping), but some council members are reportedly open to using it for other types of intervention in Sudan.

Photo by ammar nassir on Unsplash

Second, even if the security council could agree on a mission to Sudan – a tall order given current council divisions – this raises a broader question. Can a mission succeed if it lacks a political role?

The UN has been clear that peacekeeping missions should be deployed to support a political process and be guided by a political strategy. A protection mission without a political mandate would be a clear deviation from this principle.

Previous lessons also give pause to deploying a purely protection mission. For example, the UN mission in Chad was deployed to protect civilians from violence flowing from neighbouring Sudan. However, because it didn’t have a political mandate, it lacked leverage with the authorities and was kicked out by the government after less than three years.

What are the options?

The UN security council and the AU peace and security council have both asked their respective secretariats to prepare recommendations on the protection of civilians in Sudan.

However, policymakers may find themselves with few good options. While there are no easy answers, the following are some points to bear in mind.

First, the UN and AU should consider options for sending a physical protection force to Sudan to keep areas safe for displaced people and facilitate the delivery of aid. However, policymakers will have to consider how such a presence can be connected with political efforts. This is needed to provide protection actors with leverage to maintain access and put pressure on perpetrators.

Second, those involved in the political process need to integrate protection into their mediation efforts. The lead-up to negotiation processes can be a crucial time for mediators to focus on the protection of civilians. This is because warring parties may ratchet up their use of violence to improve their bargaining positions. Mediators can also include specific language within agreements – relating to sexual and gender-based violence, for example – which can later be used to hold the parties accountable for their behaviour.

Third, at the international level, member states must put diplomatic pressure on the warring parties and on third-party states that are supporting them. In particular, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been implicated in providing weapons to the Rapid Support Forces, though it denies such allegations. Other countries within the region and beyond also have a stake in the outcome of Sudan’s civil war, given the oil and other resources coming from the country. The amount of money tied up in the conflict is a major barrier to peace. However, unless external powers use diplomatic pressure to stop efforts to arm both sides of the war, it is unlikely to stop.

Finally, greater assistance should be given to community-led efforts for self-protection. A communications blackout has severely impeded civilians’ abilities to protect themselves, and must end. Cash programmes are also critical to help individuals buy food and other life-saving supplies.

Despite the difficulties of reaching some communities amid the ongoing fighting, all efforts should be made to continue integrating their perspectives into planning for protection.

Jenna Russo, Researcher and lecturer, City University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – The United Nations has accused foreign players of prolonging the war in Sudan, making it harder for the country to find peace. The fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces started in April 2023. It was sparked by two generals competing for power after a failed political transition.

Since then, the conflict has taken on a regional and international dimension. Several external actors are supporting the two warring parties with arms, ammunition and money. The United Arab Emirates is emerging as one of the foreign players most invested in the war.

We asked May Darwich, who has studied the alliances that countries in the Middle East form in the Horn of Africa, for insights into this evolving situation.

Why is peace proving elusive in Sudan?

In a little over a year of civil war, Sudan has become the site of one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. The country – the largest agricultural producer in Africa and seen as a potential breadbasket for the region – is now on the brink of the worst famine in the world.

According to the UN refugee agency, more than 7 million people are internally displaced, nearly 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries and 25 million (half of the population) are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Estimates suggest that over 20,000 people have been killed since the war began in April 2023.

Yet, prospects for peace are dim.

Fighting shows no signs of abating, efforts to hold peace talks have failed and the involvement of foreign actors is prolonging the violence.

Regional powers and neighbours have lined up behind either of the two generals at the centre of the conflict: Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces and Mohamed “Hemedti” Dagalo of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Both warring parties have since been accused by the UN of committing war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Sudan is surrounded by major arms-trafficking hubs. Weapons and ammunition are smuggled in through countries like Libya, Chad and the Central African Republic. Countries like the United Arab Emirates and Iran are supplying the war through these countries. This violates a UN arms embargo against Sudan.

Which are the biggest foreign players?

Several regional and international actors have a stake in the outcome of the conflict.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for instance, support the Sudanese army. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Libya and Russia (through the Wagner Group) support the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The UAE has emerged as the foreign player most invested in the war. It views resource-rich, strategically located Sudan as an opportunity to expand its influence and control in the Middle East and east Africa.

Since 2018, the UAE has invested over US$6 billion in the country. This includes foreign reserves in the Sudanese central bank, agriculture projects and a Red Sea port. The UAE has also recruited and paid fighters from Sudan, drawn mostly from the Rapid Support Forces, to join its conflict in Yemen.

Since 2019, the UAE has undermined Sudan’s democratic transition following the ouster of long-serving president Omar al-Bashir. Abu Dhabi empowered both the army and the paramilitary force against the civilian wing of the government. With the outbreak of the civil war, the UAE has focused on the Rapid Support Forces.

Abu Dhabi has repeatedly denied its involvement in arming the paramilitary force or supporting its leader Hemedti. However, the evidence suggests otherwise and the UAE’s dark role in the war has become an “open secret”.

The announcement by US rapper Macklemore cancelling an October 2024 concert in Dubai over the UAE’s role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis” reignited international attention on Abu Dhabi’s role in the war.

The UAE’s involvement in Sudan highlights a broader pattern in this sheikhdom’s foreign policy in the last decade: aligning with local forces to secure geopolitical and economic interests across the Middle East and east Africa.

“Khartoum,” Digital, Midjourney, Clip2Comic, 2024

In Sudan, the UAE has joined forces with Russia to support the Rapid Support Forces through the Wagner Group. The Wagner Group has been active in Sudan since 2017, primarily in connection with resource extraction projects in regions like Darfur, where Hemedti’s forces were active and became a central ally in these endeavours.

According to UN experts, the UAE established logistical operations to send weapons to the Rapid Support Forces through its networks in Libya, Chad, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Uganda. Armaments and supplies were disguised as humanitarian aid.

What’s in it for the UAE?

The interactions and alliances involving the UAE and the Rapid Support Forces reflect the complex and often opaque nature of modern geopolitical manoeuvring in Sudan.

Reports suggest that Hemedti acts as a custodian of Emirati interests in Sudan. These interests include gold and agriculture products.

Gold has been one of the main drivers of the Sudan conflict. It allows both parties to fuel their war machines. The UAE is the main beneficiary of this trade. It receives nearly all the gold smuggled from Sudan and has become a hub for laundering trafficked gold into the global market. The latest available statistics show that, officially, the UAE imported precious metals from Sudan valued at about US$2.3 billion in 2022.

Additionally, the UAE imports 90% of its food supply. Since the global food crisis in 2007, the UAE has made food security one of its highest priorities and started investing in farmlands abroad.

In Sudan, two Emirati firms are farming over 50,000 hectares in the north, with plans for expansion. Agricultural produce is then shipped through the Red Sea. To bypass the port of Sudan, which was run by the Sudanese government, the UAE signed a new deal in 2022 to build a new port on the coast of Sudan to be operated by the Abu Dhabi Ports Group.

The UAE has used the Rapid Support Forces to secure its interests and ambitions in achieving food security.

Who, and what, could break the Sudan deadlock?

The humanitarian situation in Sudan is worsening, but the international community has done little to address it.

In addition to its inability to raise sufficient aid for Sudan, the international community has applied no pressure on the UAE. The UN security council has failed to address the credible allegations by its own panel of experts on Sudan over Abu Dhabi’s involvement.

Human Rights Watch has accused the Rapid Support Forces of committing genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing in the ongoing war. However, so far, there are no prospects for holding the UAE accountable for its role with the paramilitary force. The country continues to leverage its alliances with the west.

Unless the international community is willing to stop foreign actors from fuelling the conflict, Sudan risks descending into a catastrophic humanitarian crisis that will haunt the world for decades to come.

May Darwich, Associate Professor of International Relations of the Middle East, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Sudan’s conflict is one of the world’s worst humanitarian and human rights crises, with warring parties committing atrocities with impunity, and newly acquired weapons and equipment are likely to be used in the commission of further crimes,” said Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, senior crisis, conflict, and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Fighters from both the SAF and the RSF have since mid-2023 posted photos and videos of new foreign-made kits, such as armed drones and anti-tank guided missiles.”

Human Rights Watch analyzed 49 photos and videos, most apparently filmed by fighters from both sides, posted on the social media platforms Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, and X (formerly known as Twitter), showing weapons used or captured in the conflict. The apparently new equipment that Human Rights Watch identified, which includes armed drones, drone jammers, anti-tank guided missiles, truck-mounted multi-barrel rocket launchers, and mortar munitions, was produced by companies registered in China, Iran, Russia, Serbia, and the UAE. Human Rights Watch was not able to establish how the warring parties acquired the new equipment.

The new visual evidence of equipment not known to previously be in the possession of Sudanese actors, and evidence that it is being used, suggests that the warring parties acquired some of these weapons and equipment after the start of the current conflict in April 2023. In one case, lot numbers indicate the ammunition was manufactured in 2023.

Since the conflict between the SAF and the RSF began in Sudan in April 2023, countless civilians have been killed, millions have been internally displaced, and millions face famine. The SAF and the RSF may use such weapons and equipment to continue to commit war crimes and other serious human rights violations not just in Darfur, but across the country.

The United Nations Security Council is expected to decide on September 11 whether to renew the Sudan sanctions regime, which prohibits the transfer of military equipment to the Darfur region. The sanctions regime was established in 2004, when Darfur was the epicenter of a conflict with widespread human rights abuses, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. Since April 2023, the new conflict has affected most of Sudan’s states, but Security Council members have yet to take steps to expand the arms embargo to the whole country.

These findings demonstrate both the inadequacy of the current Darfur-only embargo and the grave risks posed by the acquisition of new weapons by the warring parties. A countrywide arms embargo would contribute to addressing these issues by facilitating the monitoring of transfers to Darfur and preventing the legal acquisition of weapons for use in other parts of Sudan.

The Sudanese government has opposed an expansion of the arms embargo and in recent months has lobbied members of the Security Council to end the sanctions regime and remove the Darfur embargo altogether.

The prevalence of atrocities by the warring parties creates a real risk that weapons or equipment acquired by the parties would most likely be used to perpetuate serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, harming civilians. 

Two verified videos filmed by drones and posted on pro-SAF social media accounts show the drones attacking unarmed people in civilian clothes in Bahri (Khartoum North), one of Khartoum’s twin cities. One video, posted to X by a pro-SAF account on January 14, shows a drone dropping two mortar projectiles on apparently unarmed people in civilian clothes as they cross a street in Bahri, killing one person on the spot and leaving four others motionless after the explosions.

Another video, posted to a pro-SAF account on March 19, 2024, shows a drone dropping a munition on people wearing civilian clothes who are loading a truck with apparent sacks of grain or flour in the busy courtyard of the Seen flour mills in Bahri, injuring or killing a man who lies motionless on the floor. No weapons or military equipment are seen near the targeted areas in either video.

Ending the arms embargo would end the work of the Panel of Experts on the Sudan. The panel is one of the few entities that provides the Security Council with regular, in-depth reporting on the conflict in Sudan since the SAF-aligned government successfully demanded the closure of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan in December 2023.

In recent weeks, the discussion around renewal at the Security Council has shifted toward a renewal of the Darfur embargo and associated sanctions regime, which means, if adopted, the status quo would continue.

The Sudan sanctions regime has faced challenges since its inception. The Panel of Experts and Amnesty International have documented that the governments of Belarus, China, and Russia violated the embargo for years, yet only one individual has ever been sanctioned for violating the embargo. In a report published in July, Amnesty International found that “recently manufactured weapons and military equipment from countries such as Russia, China, Türkiye, and the UAE are being imported in large quantities into Sudan, and then diverted into Darfur.”

At a minimum, the Security Council should proceed with the planned “technical rollover” and maintain the existing Sudan sanctions regime, which, despite its limitations, provides the UN and Security Council members with crucial reporting and tools for sanctions. It should also take more robust actions in the face of violations of the existing embargo, notably by sanctioning the individuals and entities violating it.

“The Security Council should expand the Darfur arms embargo to all of Sudan to curb the flow of arms that may be used to commit war crimes,” Gallopin said. “The Security Council should publicly condemn individual governments that are violating the existing arms embargo on Darfur and take urgently needed measures to sanction individuals and entities that are violating the embargo.”

Via Human Rights Watch

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

BBC News: “Sudan on verge of ‘worst famine in the world’ as civil war continues | BBC News”

( Tomdispatch.com ) – For months, we’ve all been able to stay reasonably informed about the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. But there’s another horrific war that’s gotten so little coverage you could be excused for not knowing anything about it. What we have in mind is the seemingly never-ending, utterly devastating war in Sudan. Think of it as the missing war. And if we don’t start paying a lot more attention to it soon — as in right now — it’s going to be too late.

After 15 months of fighting in that country between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), experts in food insecurity estimate that almost 26 million people (no, that is not a misprint!), or more than half of Sudan’s population, could suffer from malnutrition by September. Eight and a half million of those human beings could face acute malnutrition. Worse yet, if the war continues on its present path, millions will die of hunger and disease in just the coming months (and few people in our world may even notice).

By now, those warring armies have driven Sudan to the brink of all-out famine, partly by displacing more than a fifth of the population from their homes, livelihoods, and farms, while preventing the delivery of food to the places most in need. And you undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that, with their foreign-policy eyes focused on Gaza and Ukraine, our country’s government and others around the world have paid remarkably little attention to the growing crisis in Sudan, making at best only half-hearted (quarter-hearted?) gestures toward helping negotiate a cease-fire between the SAF and RSF, while contributing only a small fraction of the aid Sudan needs to head off a famine of historic magnitude.

From Emergency to Catastrophe

In late June, the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, which monitors regions at risk of starvation, reported “a stark and rapid deterioration of the food security situation” in Sudan. It noted that the number of people suffering hunger severe enough to qualify, in IPC terms, as Phase 3 (“Crisis”) or Phase 4 (“Emergency”) has ballooned 45% since the end of last year. In December 2023, no Sudanese had yet made it to Phase 5 (“Catastrophe”), a condition characteristic of famines. Now, more than three-quarters of a million people are in that final phase of starving to death. Indeed, if the conflict continues to escalate, large parts of Sudan may spiral into full-blown famine, a state that exists, according to the IPC, when at least 20% of an area’s population is suffering Phase-5 hunger.

Until recently, the worst conflict and hunger were concentrated in western Sudan and around Khartoum, the country’s capital. Now, however, they’ve spread to the east and south as well. Worse yet, the war in Sudan has by now displaced an astounding 10 million people from their homes, more than four million of them children — a figure that looks like but isn’t a misprint. Many have had to move multiple times and two million Sudanese have taken refuge in neighboring countries. Worse yet, with so many people forced off their land and away from their workplaces, the capacity of farmers to till the soil and other kinds of workers to hold down a paycheck and so buy food for their families has been severely disrupted.

Not surprisingly, 15 months of brutal war have played havoc with crop production. Cereal grain harvests in 2023 were far smaller than in previous years and stocks of grain (which typically supply 80% of Sudanese caloric intake) have already been fully consumed, with months to go before the next harvest, a stretch of time known, even in good years, as the “lean season.” And with war raging, anything but a bumper crop is expected this year. Indeed, just as planting season got underway, fierce fighting spilled over into wheat-growing Gezira, one of Sudan’s 18 “states” and renowned as the nation’s breadbasket.

Sudan desperately needs food aid and it’s simply not getting enough. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees has received less than 20% of the funds necessary to help feed the Sudanese this year and has had to “drastically cut” food rations. As Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, head of the aid nonprofit Mercy Corps, told the New York Times, “World leaders continue to go through the motions, expressing concern over Sudan’s crisis. Yet they’ve failed to rise to the occasion.”

Worse yet, in the swirling chaos, even the food aid that does make it to Sudan is largely failing to reach starving populations in anything approaching adequate quantities — and when available, it’s usually unaffordable. Famished people are reportedly boiling leaves, as well as eating grass, peanut shells, and even dirt.

Starvation: “A Cheap and Very Effective Weapon”

For many families, the one thing keeping starvation at bay may be a local free soup kitchen. In a report published in May, Timmo Gaasbeek of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations noted, “Sudan has a long tradition of sharing food. After the war broke out and hunger spread, community-level initiatives for sharing food sprang up across the country. These ‘soup kitchen’ initiatives are often informal but can be very well organized.”

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Gaasbeek warned, however, that soup kitchens can fill only so many gaping holes in a system shattered by wartime destruction, displacement, and crop failure. His institute estimates that at current rates of food sharing, 2.5 million people could die of hunger and disease by the time crops are harvested in September. In other words, a shocking 10-20% of the Sudanese in the hardest-hit areas could die — mortality rates similar to ones suffered during horrendous famines in parts of Nigeria in 1969, Ethiopia in 1984, and Somalia in 1992.

By Gaasbeek’s calculations, more aggressive food sharing through soup kitchens and other means could cut the total death toll to a still-appalling one million. But that seems unlikely since even the existing efforts by local mutual-aid groups and international organizations to provide food have come under attack from both sides in the war. Six international experts writing for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have accused SAF and RSF of “using food as a weapon and starving civilians.” They also found that the “deliberate targeting of humanitarian workers and local volunteers has undermined aid operations, putting millions of people at further risk of starvation.”

We recently got in touch with Hadeel Mohamed, an educator with whom we’d spoken last October after she fled Sudan for Egypt. In a July 16th email to us, she wrote that “the war in Sudan, like many wars, has proved to be more an attack on civilians than on any armed forces.” Still in contact with neighbors who stayed behind in Khartoum, she reports that neither army is protecting civilians. In fact, the two at times appear to be tag-teaming to do them in. When, for instance, RSF forces carry out a raid, her contacts tell her, SAF troops are often “removed from the locations hours before the attacks occur.” Worse yet, for those now trying to flee as she did last year, “Some said that, in their attempts to escape Khartoum, they’ve encountered RSF forces waiting to loot them. All their supplies were stolen once again!”

Alex de Waal of the World Peace Foundation told the BBC that the RSF paramilitary is “essentially a looting machine. They rampage through the countryside and towns, stealing everything there is.” They even bombed and looted the last hospital still functioning in Northern Darfur state. No less horribly, the government’s SAF troops are guilty of trying to starve people in areas now occupied and controlled by the RSF and, according to De Waal, neither side is willing to “relinquish what is a cheap and very effective weapon.”

Echoes from a Thousand Miles Away

Is Sudan’s nightmare starting to sound grimly familiar?

* Families displaced multiple times, with war following hot on their heels.

* Food aid falling desperately short of what’s needed.

* Humanitarian aid intercepted by soldiers and other armed men before it can reach intended recipients.

* Soup kitchens attacked.

* Aid workers targeted for death.

* Hospitals bombarded, invaded, and shut down.

* Crop production capacity sabotaged during a hunger emergency.

* Washington doing little or nothing to stop the horror.

Might we be thinking, perhaps, of a small 25-mile strip of territory a thousand miles directly north of Khartoum, just on the other side of Egypt?

Sadly enough, there are many striking parallels between the wars being waged on the civilian populations of Sudan and Gaza. It would nonetheless be wrong to blame world interest in the nightmare in Gaza for drawing attention away from the civil war in Sudan. Neither of those crimes against humanity, in their scale and ghastliness, should be exploited by anyone to minimize the weight and urgency of the other. Worse yet, simply paying more attention to the nightmare in Sudan and sending its people more food aid won’t address the imbalance. The fact is that neither the Sudanese nor the Gazans have received what they most urgently need right now: an end to their respective conflicts.

Efforts by the U.S. and other countries to push for cease-fires in both places and an end to each of those wars have proven almost cataclysmically inadequate and ineffective. For Sudan, it’s been especially discouraging. Talks last year between the SAF and RSF brokered by Saudi Arabia and the United States failed to even reduce the fighting there and recent attempts to revive those talks all too expectably broke down. In early June, Egypt hosted supporters of both of Sudan’s warring parties in Cairo for negotiations. The only outcome: the creation of a supremely bureaucratic subcommittee to draft a meaningless communique.

Collective Courage

Last October, Hadeel Mohamed wrote that there was then only one modest hope in Sudan. For the millions of Sudanese living through their latest national nightmare, she told us, “You really come back to more community-based aid. With our limited resources, with our limited abilities, we still find people rising up to take care of each other.” And they’re still doing it. It’s just not enough to prevent a disastrous famine, as long as the sectarian fighting continues.

With weak support from the outside world, civilians in Sudan have little choice but to rely on long traditions of social cohesion and mutual aid as they work to survive and somehow bring the war in their country to an end. In that, there’s yet another parallel with the war on Gaza’s civilians: the coordinated service, heroism, and sacrifice personified by Palestinian journalists, taxi drivers, first responders, healthcare professionals, and countless other people is now legendary.

Civilians in many such situations are too often portrayed in the world media as nearly helpless victims. The Sudanese and Palestinian people are showing that image to be fallacious by acting with the kind of collective courage, endurance, and solidarity that’s all too rare in the comfortably situated societies that are leaving them to starve. They’re being cruelly victimized, yet they’re refusing to play the victim.

The wartime food-sharing movement in Sudan that operates soup kitchens is a good example. It’s led by grassroots neighborhood groups called “resistance committees” that started forming more than a decade ago in the wake of the Arab Spring, with the mission of providing social protection and provisioning in their home communities. They have since proliferated throughout Sudan, operating locally and independently but together forming a remarkably well-integrated national network.

The resistance committees took a leading role in grassroots protests against the October 2021 military coup that cut short a national transition to democratic rule then underway in Sudan. Eighteen months later, the current war erupted when the two generals who had led that coup turned on each other, with one leading the armed forces and the other the Rapid Support Forces. Throughout the ensuing war, at great risk to their own safety, resistance committee members have played essential lifesaving roles. While working to fend off hunger in their communities, they have also prioritized the maintenance of human rights, continuation of social services, and defense of direct democracy, while urging fervent opposition to the SAF, the RSF, and more generally the incessant militarization of their country. Some are also mobilizing their communities for self-defense.

Sudan expert Santiago Stocker suggested recently that the resistance committees, “because of their support among youth and local legitimacy in Sudan, are a voice the international community should support and elevate.” The committees are one part of a broader grassroots civilian movement that participated in those ill-fated Cairo talks. That movement, Stocker argues, could sooner or later help break the deadlock in Sudan by pressing other nations to move decisively to help end the war. They could urge, for example, that “the international community… increase punitive measures, including sanctions, against RSF and SAF leadership and key members of the SAF’s governing coalition, including businesses and hardline religious groups.”

While it’s important indeed that Gaza remains a focus of our attention as long as the nightmarish Israeli campaign there continues, it’s no less important that those of us in the Global North focus on the less visible war in Sudan and push our governments to impose punitive measures on that country’s generals and other elites, while pulling out all the stops (and ample cash) to get food to the millions who desperately need it.

Sudan should simply no longer be callously ignored.

Copyright 2024 Stan Cox and Priti Gulati Cox

Via Tomdispatch.com

(The Conversation) – After 14 months of escalating internal conflict, Sudan is now confronting its most severe food security crisis on record. The latest situation report, released on 27 June, reveals a grim picture: more than half the population of 47.2 million is facing acute food insecurity. This signifies severe lack of food, high malnutrition and starvation leading to death.

There is also a high risk of famine in multiple regions if immediate action is not taken. Famine is a severe and widespread lack of food that leads to extreme hunger, malnutrition and increased mortality in a population.

Food insecurity is measured on the widely accepted five-stage Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). The five phases range from “minimal” (people have enough food) through “stressed”, “crisis” and “emergency” to “famine” (extreme lack of food, starvation, very high death rates). This scale is intended to help governments and other humanitarian actors quickly understand a situation and take action.

Sudan’s deteriorating situation stems from an escalation in conflict and organised violence among Sudanese armed factions in the civil war that started in April 2023. This has also made the work of monitoring the food crisis particularly hard. The IPC’s technical working group for Sudan has faced huge challenges in updating its assessment analysis. These include security threats, lack of physical access, and data gaps in hotspot areas.

Nonetheless, in March, it published an alert about the situation and the urgent need for action to prevent famine. The new analysis, conducted between late April and early June, confirms the worst fears.

We are agricultural economists with more than 50 years of research between us. Our recent work includes Famine in Gaza, questions for research and preventive action and Food security and social assistance in Sudan during armed conflict. It is our view that with no end to the conflict in sight and difficulties to provide humanitarian assistance, the prospects are dire for tens of millions in Sudan.

Rapidly rising acute food insecurity

In its December 2023 analysis of the situation, the IPC projected that 17.7 million people (37% of the population) could face crisis-level conditions or worse between October 2023 and February 2024. Of these, 4.9 million were in food “emergency” conditions. The situation has since worsened dramatically.

During April and May nearly 21.3 million people across Sudan were estimated to face high levels of acute food insecurity. These included 153,000 people in famine-like conditions, the most severe phase of food insecurity classification. It’s plausible that between June and September 2024, the number of people facing crisis-level acute food insecurity will rise to 25.6 million. This is a 45% increase from the previous projection period (October 2023 to February 2024).

This scenario anticipates:

• Ongoing conflict, particularly in North Darfur, West and South Kordofan, Khartoum, and Al Jazirah states, leading to increased displacement, with heavily populated south-eastern states also being affected.

• Economic shocks, due to conflict-related disruptions, resulting in a contracting economy, rising inflation and below-average food production.

• Market disruptions, particularly in key trade hubs, worsening food shortages and price hikes.

• Restricted humanitarian access, especially in conflict-affected areas, and above-average rainfall which may cause flooding, further complicating food security but offering some agricultural opportunities in accessible regions.

• An elevated risk of famine during the same period for 14 areas in nine states. Greater Darfur, Greater Kordofan, Al Jazirah states, and parts of Khartoum are the most affected areas.

• The IPC projects that there could be some improvement in food security conditions during the harvest season from October 2024 to February 2025. As a result, the total of those facing crisis-level or worse food insecurity could fall to about 21 million people. But this will still leave 109,000 people under famine-like conditions.

Key drivers

The main driver of this rapidly worsening situation is the intensification of Sudan’s conflict and insecurity situation. The conflict has restricted movements of goods and services, disrupted markets, and hindered agricultural production and humanitarian access, thus severely reducing the availability and access to food for millions of Sudanese.

Al Jazeera English: “Sudan: UN warns of famine threat as fighting escalates in northern Darfur”

The food crisis is not a new phenomenon. It is part of a recurring syndrome of triple crises comprising protracted civil conflicts, climate shocks and economic instability. Beside the ongoing war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, the country has a recent history of severe civil conflicts. These include Africa’s longest civil war (1983-2005) and the Darfur crisis (2003) among others.

These have triggered economic woes, including skyrocketing prices of basic commodities, severely eroding food access for much of the population.

Additionally, climate shocks such as prolonged droughts and severe flooding have devastated crop yields and livestock. The national cereal production in 2023 was estimated to be 46% below levels of the previous year.

The conflict has forced the displacement of more than 10 million people. Sudan now counts 10.1 million internally displaced persons and 2.2 million refugees. This makes it the country with the highest number of forcibly displaced people in the world. The internally displaced persons and refugees have lost their livelihoods and are largely dependent on humanitarian assistance. As the conflict is hampering access to such assistance, these are among the people most at risk of famine.

Economic conditions have recently worsened further. Disrupted supply chains and production capacity have pushed up already very high prices of food and all other basic necessities. In some areas of the country prices of staple commodities have tripled since May compared with the most recent five-year period average.

Can widespread famine be averted?

To avert a famine, a de-escalation of the conflict is needed to create better security conditions and put an end to the current disruptions in markets, supply chains and distribution channels. The IPC working group on Sudan also makes these recommendations for immediate action:

Restore humanitarian access so that humanitarian agencies can get safe and sustained access to areas with populations most in need.

Substantially increase the amount of food assistance and other essential supplies to prevent loss of life and support livelihoods.

Scale up nutrition interventions, particularly for vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women.

Support livelihoods, including distribution of agricultural inputs and creating safe zones for farming.

It is crucial for the international community to respond swiftly to avert a humanitarian disaster in Sudan.

Rob Vos, Unit Director, Markets, Trade, and Institutions, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Khalid Siddig, Senior Research Fellow and Program Leader for the Sudan Strategy Support Program, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Human Rights Watch ) – (New York, March 15, 2024) – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to alert the Security Council in the coming days that Sudan has entered a downward spiral of extreme conflict-induced hunger, Human Rights Watch said today. The council should immediately take action, including by adopting targeted sanctions against individuals responsible for obstructing aid access in Darfur.

“The Security Council will be formally put on notice that the conflict in Sudan risks spurring the world’s largest hunger crisis,” said Akshaya Kumar, crisis advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The Council just broke months of silence by adopting a resolution on Sudan last week, and should build on that momentum by imposing consequences on those responsible for preventing aid from getting to people who need it.”

The alert will be sent to the Council as a so called “white note,” drafted by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in accordance with its mandate under Security Council resolution 2417 to ring the alarm about “the risk of conflict-induced famine and wide-spread food insecurity.” OCHA’s alert follows warnings by international aid experts, Sudanese civil society leaders, and Sudanese emergency responders that people across Sudan are dying of hunger. It also comes on the heels of Sudan’s Armed Forces (SAF) brazenly escalating its efforts to restrict the movement of humanitarian aid.

Sudan war may spark world’s largest hunger crisis, says aid organisation | BBC News Video added by IC

In a 2023 presidential statement, the Security Council reiterated its “strong intention to give its full attention” to information provided by the secretary-general when it is alerted to situations involving conflict induced food insecurity. The council should honor that commitment and convene an open meeting to discuss OCHA’s findings. That could pave the way for decisive action, including sanctions on individuals responsible for obstructing aid delivery, Human Rights Watch said.

Since conflict broke out between Sudan’s Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023, both warring parties have restricted aid delivery, access, and distribution. Ninety percent of people in Sudan facing emergency levels of hunger are in areas that are “largely inaccessible” to the World Food Programme. “Communities (in Sudan) are on the brink of famine because we are prevented from reaching many of the children, women and families in need,” according to UNICEF executive director, Catherine Russell.

In February, Sudan’s military leader, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said the authorities would no longer allow aid to reach areas under RSF control. Aid organizations have repeatedly said that the SAF is obstructing their delivery of aid to RSF-controlled areas. Aid groups face a maze of bureaucratic impediments, including delays, arbitrary restrictions on movement, harassment, and outright bans on some supplies.

On March 4, Sudan’s foreign affairs minister added to the restrictions, announcing that the government opposed cross-border aid delivery from Chad to areas under RSF control. On March 6, Sudanese authorities informed the UN that they would allow limited cross-border movement exclusively through specific crossings under the control of forces allied to the military. Sudanese authorities have also blocked cross-line aid movement to RSF-controlled territory, which has put Khartoum under a de facto aid blockade since November 2023 at least, aid groups told Human Rights Watch.

The UN welcomed the Sudanese authorities’ announcement identifying aid crossings. The medical charity, Doctors Without Borders, however, raised concerns that this would leave “vast areas in Darfur, Kordofan, Khartoum and Jazeera states still inaccessible.”  

Aid operations have also been choked by limited funding. As of the end of February, the UN’s appeal was 5 percent funded. That gap is exacerbated by widespread looting of warehouses, including a December 2023 incident in which Rapid Support Forces fighters looted stocks in a World Food Programme warehouse in Wad Madani that would have been used to feed 1.5 million hungry people and attacked an MSF compound, forcing the organization to evacuate its team. There have been widespread attacks on aid workers, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, including killings, injuries and detentions.

The Security Council’s latest resolution 2724 on Sudan calls “on all parties to ensure the removal of any obstructions to the delivery of aid and to enable full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access, including cross-border and cross-line, and to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that “the apparently deliberate denial of safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian agencies within Sudan itself constitutes a serious violation of international law, and may amount to a war crime.”

The Security Council’s Sudan Sanctions Committee met in February, announcing that it “wishes to remind the parties that those who commit violations of international humanitarian law and other atrocities may be subject to targeted sanctions measures in accordance with paragraph 3 (c) of resolution 1591 (2005).”

The World Food Programme and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization found in a recent report that food security in Sudan had significantly deteriorated even faster than anticipated, and that there is a risk of “catastrophic conditions” hitting the states of West and Central Darfur “during the lean season in early 2024,” roughly from April to July.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a US government-funded group that monitors food insecurity, said in February that the “worst-affected populations … in Omdurman (in Khartoum state) and El Geneina (in West Darfur state)” were expected to soon see “Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) outcomes.” Under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, a globally recognized scale used to classify food insecurity and malnutrition, catastrophic conditions are the fifth and worst phase. The program determines that famine is occurring when over 20 percent of an area’s population are facing extreme food gaps, and children’s acute malnutrition and mortality exceed emergency rates.

According to new figures released by the Nutrition Cluster in Sudan, nearly 230,000 children, pregnant women, and new mothers could die in the coming months due to hunger.

In Darfur, civil society and local leaders have repeatedly sounded the alarm about hunger among displaced people living in camps in areas under RSF control. Leaders shared that their communities have resorted to eating ants, tree bark, and animal feed. People currently in West Darfur include survivors of waves of attacks by the RSF and their allied militias, which Human Rights Watch has described as “having all the hallmarks of an organized campaign of atrocities against Massalit civilians.” A local government official reported in early March that 22 children had died of hunger in Murnei, a town in West Darfur that was the site of horrific RSF attacks in June 2023.

In January, Doctors Without Borders raised the alarm on malnutrition in Zamzam camp in North Darfur, warning that “an estimated one child is dying every two hours.” A camp leader from Kalma camp in Nyala (South Darfur) told Human Rights Watch that 500 to 600 children and at least 80 older people have died in the camp since the start of the conflict because of what he believed was the result of lack of food and medical supplies. “People [are] dying every day,” he said. He said that the RSF has also been limiting the amount of food supplies entering the camp since it took control of the city in October.

In Khartoum, a communications blackout has forced hundreds of communal kitchens run by Sudanese emergency response rooms, a grassroots mutual aid network, to pause operations, leaving many people without food, and reports of people dying alone in their homes of hunger. “The shutdown has a significant impact on food access and distribution,” a member of one of the emergency response rooms in Khartoum told Human Rights Watch in mid-February, “it is happening while we are facing growing food insecurity and risk of famine in the capital.”

This is the first time Sudan has been spotlighted in this kind of an alert from the secretary-general to the Security Council. Guyana, Switzerland, the US, and other Security Council members have pledged to make combating food insecurity a priority for the UN’s most powerful body. 

“Council members should show leadership by holding open discussions to develop a plan that averts the risk of mass starvation in Sudan and imposing targeted sanctions on the individuals responsible for obstructing aid,” Kumar said. “The people of Sudan need more than words. They need food.”

Via Human Rights Watch

He also said that his government would not allow any American shipments to Yemen, and called on other Arab countries to boycott not only Israeli but also American trade in the region.

The Gaza conflict has several theaters. There is the Israeli war of genocide on the Palestinians of Gaza, which has killed over 18,000 people and wounded tens of thousands, the vast majority of them innocent noncombatants, and destroyed or damaged about half the region’s housing stock along with other essential infrastructure and buildings. It has also left the civilian population without sufficient food or water and exposed to deadly infectious diseases.

Then there is the tense Israeli-Lebanese border, where Israel has bombed from fighter jets and Hezbollah has fired rockets, necessitating the evacuation of some of northern Israel.

There have been Shiite militia attacks on US personnel in Syria and Iraq, with more threatened.

And then there is the really important Red Sea front, where the Houthi government has targeted commercial vessels it says are ferrying goods and supplies to Israel, though it seems also to be hitting just any old merchant ship. The Houthis are Zaydi Shiites and form part of the Iran-led Axis of Resistance to Israeli political dominance in the Levant and the occupation of the Palestinians. The Houthis survived an eight-year war with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, wealthy oil states allied with the United States that either recognize Israel (in the case of the UAE) or are considering it (the Saudis).

Yemen is a rugged country of impenetrable highlands and wildernesses. I’ve been there several times. The winding mountain roads outside Sanaa made me carsick. The Yemenis gave me khat for the nausea.

The country sits athwart the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the 20-mile-wide Bab al-Mandeb or Mandeb Straits through which traffic between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean passes. The UAE and its allies control the southern coast along the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, but the Houthis control some of the Red Sea coast and use their window on the sea to threaten shipping for their geopolitical purposes with drones, including Iran-made KAS-04 unmanned aerial vehicles. The Houthis have hit several container ships and a Norwegian oil tanker.

The Houthi government announced Saturday that it had launched a large number of drones toward the region of Eilat, Israel’s port city on the Gulf of Aqaba just off the Red Sea.

At the same time, the United States Central Command announced that its destroyers in the Red Sea had shot down 14 one-way attack drones.

The British Navy also weighed in, saying that a Sea Viper missile from the HMS Diamond had taken out a Houthi drone that threatened merchant shipping.

CBS News: “Houthis target ships in Red Sea, U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria face daily attacks”

As a result of the ongoing Houthi drone attacks on freighters, some of the world’s biggest and most important shipping corporations have announced that they will avoid the Red Sea and the Suez Canal for now. They are not only fleeing danger but also the dramatically spiking cost of insuring any vessels that ply those waters. The companies include Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), whose MSC PALATIUM III freighter was taken out of commission by a Houthi drone attack on Friday. They also include CMA CGM of France, Maersk of Denmark, and Hapag-Lloyd of Germany, according to the BBC.

Israeli shipping costs have shot up over 250%, and some insurers are refusing to insure their vessels.

The US plan to form a naval task force to escort container ships and protect them from the drones won’t work, because it won’t push down insurance costs. They could try to strike the Houthis, but 8 years of Saudi and UAE bombing of them did no good, so I wouldn’t hold my breath that lashing out would be effective. Moreover, the Biden administration doesn’t want the Gaza conflict to spread throughout the region and further destabilize it.

Some 10 percent of world trade goes through the Suez Canal on 17,000 ships a year. Nowadays, about 12% of the petroleum shipped by tanker goes through the Suez Canal, along with Liquefied Natural Gas shipments. These ships will now have to go around the Cape of Good Hope and skirt the west coast of Africa, adding over 10,000 nautical miles (over 12,000 landlubber miles) and 8 to 10 days to the journey, with all the consequent extra expenses of fuel and provisions. The shipping companies will be hurt by this change, as well as the countries along the Red Sea such as Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel. The detour will contribute to supply chain shortages and cause an increase in the price of imported goods for many countries in Europe.