Mariel Ferragamo
The conflict between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has engulfed the nation. No end is in sight.
Fighting appears to be only escalating across all eighteen of Sudan’s states. Its capital, Khartoum, is almost entirely in ruins. The RSF seizure of the city of Wad Madani, a critical supply hub, has suffocated the little external aid civilians were receiving. Health-care systems have collapsed, attacks on women and girls are rampant, and famine is setting in. UN officials have warned that more than two million Sudanese are at risk of death by starvation this fall.
“The most likely trajectory [PDF] forward is towards famine, fighting that takes on increasingly ethnic and regional aspects, and the possibility of a failed state of 50 million people on the strategic eastern gateway to the Sahel,” Tom Perriello, the U.S. envoy to Sudan, told Congress in May. Sudan is plunging into the worst famine the world has seen in at least forty years.
Despite these warnings, many observers are calling Sudan the world’s “forgotten war.” As the humanitarian situation deteriorates, sorely needed aid is not arriving, signaling a historic failure in the global aid system.
“There is no time to lose,” emphasized Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator based in Port Sudan.
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