Throughout the early half of the decade, the world has felt like a powder keg which is one spark away from a catastrophic explosion. In many parts of the world, said keg has already exploded, and while many of these conflicts seemingly only ‘went hot’ in the past few years, they have really been simmering in the background long before the 2020s. This is the case with the current civil war in Sudan, which only began gaining widespread attention in mid-April in 2023 and is steadily approaching its two-year mark. Since Sudan’s foundation in 1956, the state has sadly been marred by civil conflicts brought on by post-colonial division and religious tensions. These conflicts have repeatedly devolved into genocidal retributions against civilian populations. The roughly one and a half years that the current conflict has drawn on have also been marked by horrific human rights abuses, in the form of rampant sexual abuse, exacerbated situations of famine and genocidal actions. Nearly eight million people have now been internally displaced, with a further two million fleeing abroad, primarily to countries in Central and Northeastern Africa.
Unfortunately, the civilian fallout from the conflict has been woefully underreported to the general public, with major media organizations like The New York Times far more committed to covering other ongoing conflicts; the media monolith has released 10 and 13 times more articles on the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts, respectively. This lack of reporting about the conflict in Sudan is due to a number of factors, including a number of characteristics that make it less appealing to readers. Yet while I do think it is always important for people to be informed about such crises, media coverage only goes so far. The effect of the news cycle on the actions of bureaucrats and politicians is dubious at best when it comes to humanitarian aid, as highlighted by a 2023 study.
The discussion about how to stop the conflict in general, which would be the biggest boon to the plight of Sudan’s nearly 50 million inhabitants, is also an incredibly convoluted one. Slews of foreign actors are funneling weapons and resources to either side; governments allow those weapons to travel through their territories and the two opposing sides have settled in for a protracted push-and-pull of frontlines underlined by constant and indiscriminate artillery and drone attacks. This is an important yet difficult dilemma and as such it is important to examine what can be done to relieve as much pressure as possible off the civilian population until there is a lasting cease-fire.
Mulling over what should be done by internal state actors is, in my opinion, a pointless mind game thinking about a situation which we, in reality, have little insight into. Thus, I think it is more helpful to talk about what can be done by foreign state actors to relieve the pressure on the civilian population. The Aligned for Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan Group, a coalition of countries who have come together to form a more proactive front against the conflict, held a summit this August to achieve this goal. However, the summit amounted to only a fraction of the potential aid that these nations could provide due to the sporadically open humanitarian corridors in Sudan only being able to sustain a small portion of the aid needed and undergoing constant interference. On top of that, General al-Burhan, commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, did not even attend the summit in person due to “very negative political forces kneecapping him,” so bringing both sides to the (physical) table should be a priority.
Several members of the ALPS group, most notably the United Arab Emirates, are also complicit in this arms trade and must be properly held accountable for their responsibility. Overall, the ALPS Group needs to come together to form a non-negotiable and heavy-handed agreement to keep humanitarian corridors open. The group needs to figure out a way to exert serious pressure on both sides of the conflict, force them to the table and stop allowing tens of millions of people to starve and die from either negligence or violent repression.
The nations of the African Union, which have recently upped their initiative towards the conflict, need to either fully join hands and throw their weight behind the ALPS group or continue to work together to uphold and strengthen their own initiative to pressure the opposing sides to both agree to definitive humanitarian terms. Ultimately, while the most beneficial outcome would obviously be a lasting cease-fire, there is a lot that can be done by foreign powers to at least put more effort into helping as many civilians as possible while the conflict rages on.
