It is incomprehensible that the war in Sudan, the greatest humanitarian tragedy taking place in the world these days, receives no attention either from the media in Europe or, especially, from the international community.
As you know, at Casa África we prepare daily what we call the #DosierAfrica, a compilation of news about the continent with links to national, African and international media on the continent's current affairs. It is posted on the website and is also distributed in the form of a newsletter, which means that in the middle of the morning, every working day, close to a thousand people (our network of embassies, Africanists, journalists, aid workers, etc.) receive an e-mail with which we contribute to something as useful as being able to quickly and easily keep up to date on everything that is happening in Africa. I would like to take this opportunity to say that it is free, a service that we offer to those interested in the continent, and that you only have to request it from Casa África by email. We can boast of a daily action of international projection from the Canary Islands.
What I am here to tell you today is that not a day goes by that the Security, Development or Health sections of this compilation do not include some news item on the critical situation in Sudan. Because the war in Sudan is, right now, the greatest humanitarian emergency in the world. The greatest. And the world is currently experiencing the conflict in Ukraine, or the invasion of Gaza. But, in terms of numbers, the scale of the Sudan war is greater.
From one of the pieces of information that we include daily in #DosierAfrica, I found an extraordinary radio piece and chronicle on the RTVE website by a Radio Nacional journalist with many years of experience in Africa, Santiago Barnuevo. He wrote: “If they tell you that the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our time is unfolding in Sudan, you might not believe it. And not because it is not true, but because the world seems to care little that half of its 50 million inhabitants do not know what they will eat tomorrow”.
I have written about Sudan before, and always used the term ‘forgotten’ when referring to its conflict. In view of the magnitude of the conflict, I think the term needs to be tightened up, so we will use ‘ignored’. Recall that since April 2023 the country has been embroiled in a civil war that did not come out of nowhere: it was the result of a bitter struggle for power between two generals who, paradoxically, had been allies in the overthrow of the transitional civilian government that emerged after the fall of the dictator Al Bashir in 2019. On one side, the regular army - the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) - and on the other, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary group. The outbreak of the conflict surprised many and forced the departure and evacuation of thousands of people from the country, including our Ambassador, Isidro González, from Tenerife.
The numbers are shocking. In nearly 900 days (or 29 months) of conflict, more than 12 million people have been forced to flee their homes inside Sudan. Between three and four million have fled across borders, many of them to neighbouring Chad. Estimates of the death toll hover around 150,000, although the real figure is likely to be even higher. In the first six months of 2025 alone, the UN confirmed the deaths of 3,384 civilians, a number that already equals almost all of those recorded in 2024. Meanwhile, 24 million Sudanese - more than half the population - survive under the threat of famine. In fact, according to the Red Cross, there are already two million people in a situation of declared famine, that is, the highest level of classification of a food emergency (there are five stages and famine is the last, the only one that qualifies as a catastrophe). Because in Sudan, famine is not only a consequence of war: it has become another weapon. Surely that reminds you of the situation in Gaza.
In recent weeks, the drama has been particularly cruelly concentrated in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. This city in the west of the country, once a vital urban hub, has been under FAR siege for more than 500 days. The remaining hospitals and schools have been targeted by shelling. No significant humanitarian aid has entered the city since January 2025. A city inhabited by hundreds of thousands of human beings, half of them children, who survive without food, drinking water or medicine. Many are dying of treatable diseases, dehydration and neglect. The health services are totally collapsed.
The few newspaper reports that have come in report that the few humanitarian aid organisations present in El Fasher have documented, for example, how people queue up to eat the waste produced in a groundnut oil factory, i.e. the waste material that was normally used to feed the animals.
Across the country, the war has blown up what is most basic to life: basic infrastructure. Barely one in four health centres is still standing; more than 70% have been reduced to rubble or have simply ceased to function. And of course, the consequences are that outbreaks of malaria, typhoid and dengue fever are spreading unchecked. In just one month, in one area of Khartoum, more than 5,000 cases were reported.
Faced with a lack of medicines and the collapse of the few remaining hospitals, the setback is so severe that child immunisation rates are back to the levels of four decades ago. Sudan now holds the sad record as the country with the lowest vaccination coverage in the world. And with regard to education, a fact that reminds us of the youth of the Sudanese population: 15 to 19 million children cannot go to school. Is such a situation, extending over more than two years, an irreversible blow to an entire generation?
As in so many contemporary conflicts, the international silence on Sudan can only be understood from a geopolitical point of view. Whose interest is it to keep this war quiet? Many argue that what is presented as a struggle between two generals is, in reality, a proxy war: foreign powers are fuelling it to secure their access to the country's resources. Gold, oil, fertile land and a strategic location on the Red Sea are the real spoils.
Sudan's wealth undoubtedly reminds us of the Democratic Republic of Congo and its conflict in the Kivus area (the M23 and the role of Rwanda), which we have also mentioned on other occasions. Without going any further, the Congolese president, Félix Tshisekedi, denounced this week at the United Nations General Assembly that the conflict in his country (the same one that Trump counts as one of those he has been able to stop as president) should be classified as genocide.
Returning to Sudan, the UAE stands out as a major financier and arms supplier to the FAR, with interests ranging from ensuring its food security to benefiting - along with Russia and a few other countries - from paramilitary-controlled gold smuggling in Darfur. It is no coincidence that Dubai, with no mines of its own, has become the epicentre of the global gold trade. If we have always heard of blood diamonds in Sierra Leone (remember the film with Leonardo DiCaprio), it is not uncommon to find the term Sudanese “blood gold” in information. At the same time, Egypt and Saudi Arabia support the regular Sudanese army, turning the country into a chessboard where, through intermediaries, regional disputes as sensitive and important as the control of the Nile (the geopolitics of which, by the way, deserve a future article) are fought out.