Sudan’s griding civil war passed the three-year mark this week, with no end in sight to the fighting. The country has now been de facto partitioned, with the army controlling much of the territory in the north and east and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) dominating in the southwest.
The numbers alone tell a sobering story of suffering and trauma that will be passed down through generations. At least 59,000 people have been confirmed killed, though some estimates of the death toll range as high as 400,000. More than 13 million have been displaced, either within Sudan or to neighboring countries. Nineteen million people are facing acute hunger, and 8 million children are out of school.
Despite the scale of the devastation and suffering, global attention on the crisis has been disproportionately muted, even as the war has metastasized outside Sudan’s borders. External powers share much of the blame for fueling the conflict, particularly the United Arab Emirates, the primary backer of the RSF. Humanitarian aid, meanwhile, has sharply fallen off due to steep cuts by the United States and other donor states.