Sudan’s capital city Khartoum is burning, and the world is not watching. Since 15 April 2023, the government backed Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been battling for control of the state and its resources, particularly Sudan’s rich mineral deposits. This bloody and protracted civil war has no clear end in sight.
A humanitarian disaster
Since the war in Sudan began more than 20,000 people have been killed, and an estimated 130,000 more have died due to conflict induced famine and the collapse of medical systems. Human rights violations and war crimes, including widespread sexual violence, the bombing of maternity hospitals and refugee camps, and the deliberate blocking of humanitarian aid, are being perpetrated by both sides. Some commentators point to cases of ethnic cleansing to suggest that Sudan may be on the brink of a genocide.
Moreover, ten million Sudanese people have been displaced, more than a quarter of Sudan’s 46-million-person population. Two million are now refugees in fragile neighbouring countries, including Chad, the host of the largest refugee camp in the world, which holds 216,000 people (roughly the population of Portsmouth). The struggles faced by the eight million people internally displaced within Sudan, three million of whom are children, are exacerbated by severe weather events linked to climate change, which have led to widespread famine and acute hunger.
However, despite the scale of horror and suffering, the international community, and the world at large, seem to be overlooking and ignoring this conflict. Most people remain under or entirely uninformed. When attention literally translates into lives saved, in the form of donations and humanitarian aid, Sudan cannot afford for us to look away. Of the $2.1 billion of aid pledged by world donors in April of this year, only 16% has been received. It begs the question: why is it that people seem to care less, if indeed they care at all, about the conflict in Sudan when compared to others – notably those raging in Ukraine and Gaza?
Why is no one watching?
There are many causes of this relative inattention. It could be because Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world and is historically highly unstable and volatile. It may link to racist and Eurocentric notions that Africa is perpetually unstable and violent, fractured along ethnic lines. The sense that there have been protracted civil wars in Africa since forever (including in the Congo (1996-2003), Nigeria (1967-1970), Somalia (1991), and Rwanda (1990-1994)), creates the idea that conflict in Africa is somehow inevitable. It suggests that the loss of African lives – to war or disease or famine – is sad, but ultimately expected for a region which is constantly suffering. But this attitude ignores the political and colonial causes of conflict and instability, for example the drawing of nation borders with little regard for ethnic makeup. It presents violence and poverty in Africa as a foregone conclusion, and therefore one which is somehow less worthy of our attention.
It could be because civil wars often hold less geopolitical significance, and therefore ‘matter less’ to the international order, than those being waged between nation states. The civil wars affecting the people of Syria and Yemen are still ongoing, but the world has moved on whilst their suffering endures.
We are, for the most part, in an era of decreasing Western interventionism. The international order is increasingly delicate and unstable, and the complicated and contested legacies of other interventions, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, have scarred the public psyche, and may have made Western policy makers permanently reluctant to get involved. The era of Western attempts at conflict ‘resolution’ may well be over. But of course, a lack of willingness to intervene militarily should not translate to a lack of willingness to engage in humanitarian efforts.
Why do Ukraine and Gaza overshadow?
Unlike the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, Sudan is harder to digest and understand. There is profound contention surrounding the Israel-Gaza conflict, meaning the sense of there being a clear-cut ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is deeply felt by many people. On the other hand, the SAF and RSF are difficult to differentiate, in many respects they are as bad as each other, with both sides having been accused of war crimes and atrocities.
Ukraine is geographically and culturally closer to the West, with the outbreak of conflict having led to an outpouring of support, with many British people taking Ukrainian refugees into their homes. Much of the reporting and commentary surrounding the Ukrainian conflict was highly racialised. For example, a French journalist suggested that “We’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives”, and the former Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine said even more explicitly that “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair […] being killed every day”. With this attitude, Sudan seems far away, foreign, alien, disconnected from the Western way of life. But should that make it less deserving of our concern and attention?
Moreover, the persistent attention given to the Israel-Gaza conflict may be precisely because it is so divisive and controversial. It has tapped into the the current cultural climate, becoming increasingly moralised, polarised and embedded within the broader ‘culture wars’. The Israel-Gaza conflict has taken on a life of its own, transmuting into a proxy through which to express broader sentiments about religion, ethnicity, imperialism, and colonialism.
Gaza continues to dominate the Western media landscape, particularly through social media channels. Conversely, in Sudan, information is systematically suppressed, and less than 30% of the population have internet access. Here, out of sight quite literally translates to out of mind.
In an increasingly unstable world, which often appears to be coming apart at the seams, we are constantly bombarded with suffering and pain. It seems impossible to care enough about everything which matters. But we should care about Sudan. The least that we can do is to not look away.
