Humanitarian crisis deepens in Sudan as war rages on despite ceasefire declarations

On 15 April fighting broke out in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and has since spread throughout the country in a conflict of unprecedented scale. 

Background to the conflict

The outbreak of war followed weeks of tension over the integration of the Rapid Support Force (RSF) headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) into the state military, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), headed by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The latter has been the de facto military ruler of Sudan since October 2021 when the two factions together toppled a civilian-led transitional government in a successful coup. 

In December 2022, the beginning of efforts to restore a democratic civilian government had been put in place with the signing of a peace agreement between the military and some key civilian political stakeholders. Today, the two factions are engaging in a brutal struggle for control of resources and power in Sudan, with an apparent disregard for their humanitarian responsibilities and the laws of war.

Both forces have a long history of serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, notably including brutal attacks on villages in the Darfur region in 2014 and 2015 in campaigns led by the RSF and supported by the SAF and other government-backed militia groups. Within the current fighting, both sides continue to show what Human Rights Watch (HRW) called a ‘deadly disregard for the civilian population’.

Healthcare system on the brink of collapse

In Khartoum, hospitals have been targets of attack, rendering the majority incapable of functioning. Sudan’s doctors’ union reported that 16 hospitals have been bombed or shelled, while a further 19 have been forcibly evicted by the military, some of which have since been used for military operations. 70% of basic hospitals in the capital and states have closed, and those that remain open are experiencing severe shortages of specialised medical staff, oxygen supplies and blood bags.  

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, as well as the World Health Organisation and local doctors, warn that Sudan’s entire health system is at risk of collapse.  

Within this context, reports from eyewitnesses illustrate ‘piles of bodies’ being left to decompose on the streets of Khartoum or dumped into rivers. Cases of severe disease have risen accordingly, as desperate people have resorted to drinking directly from the Nile due to a lack of water supply to the capital. So far, over 600 people have been reported dead by Sudan’s Ministry of Health, and more than 5,000 wounded.

Humanitarian crisis

A displacement crisis is growing as over 330,000 people inside Sudan have been forced out of their hometowns and a further 100,000 or more refugees and returnees have fled Sudan to Egypt, Chad, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Ethiopia. The UNHCR estimates that this number could increase to 860,000 people.  

Human rights abuses such as extortion, looting and assault have been rife for those on the move. The cost of transport out of the conflict zones is reportedly five times higher than before the outbreak of violence, making it exceedingly difficult for the poorest in the country to reach safety.  

The situation facing Sudanese people is dire. According to the UN, before the conflict broke out a third of Sudan’s population of 46 million was already in need of humanitarian assistance.

Now, those who remain in areas where fighting has taken place are trapped, and entire neighbourhoods in the capital have been cut off from water, food and electricity. Aid operations have been forced to pause, depriving people of assistance.  This has the greatest impact on women, who are also at increased risk of potentially life-threatening gender-based violence since the conflict began.

The few remaining doctors have been forced into hiding after receiving threats from the military, while reports of medical volunteers being detained for days by army officers illustrates the inhumane disregard of the de facto ruling forces for the urgency of the humanitarian crisis they have created.

Violence continues despite ceasefire

Despite successive threadbare ceasefires being declared over the last few weeks, explosions and clashes have continued sporadically in Khartoum and Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state, as each force scrambles for control of strategic sites ahead of any negotiations.

As of 6 May, the SAF and RSF have commenced talks in Jeddah on account of a joint initiative by the Saudi and U.S. governments to end the conflict. So far, Sudan’s civilian pro-democracy forces, which have been progressively sidelined since the 2021 coup, have been excluded from such negotiations.

ACHRS stance

ACHRS joins the UN and other international organisations in calling for an immediate end to the conflict and urgent restoration of humanitarian aid systems. The conflict in Sudan is categorised under the 1949 Geneva Conventions as a ‘non-international’ armed conflict, for which international humanitarian law prohibits violence against non-combatants.  The warring parties must swiftly begin rectifying the crises that their violations of this law have generated.

ACHRS also recognises that in practice this ‘non-international’ armed conflict has been fuelled by international non-state organisations who equally need to be held accountable. Notably, it is widely understood that Russia’s Wagner Group has been undermining Sudan’s transition to democracy by assisting both the RSF and SAF in escalating their military capacities, for their own lucrative gain in concessions and contracts.  

This situation, in which the Wagner Group and other Private Military Contractors (PMCs) seek to create dependent relationships with fragile military governments, in return for access to their natural resources, has been recurring dangerously in the MENA region and elsewhere.  In recent years, Wagner Group contractors have been deployed in the region to Syria, Yemen, Libya and Sudan, where they have enabled the regimes of illegitimate military governments and at times their employees have been accused of human rights violations.  

In 2021, the EU imposed sanctions on the Wagner Group accusing it of human rights abuses.  The recent events in Sudan, however, illustrate the inadequacy of such travel bans and asset freezes in this context. ACHRS acknowledges the complexity of holding non-state actors accountable within current international legal systems. ACHRS calls for the global development of creative and new methods of bringing action against any and all parties responsible for human rights violations, to prevent the ongoing cultivation of crises such as that which we are witnessing in Sudan.