Sudan Enters Fourth Year of Devastating Civil War as Humanitarian Catastrophe Deepens

Sudan has now entered its fourth year of civil war, with the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) showing no signs of abating. While pockets of the capital Khartoum exhibit fragile signs of returning normalcy, the broader nation continues to endure what the United Nations has called the world’s largest displacement crisis, with tens of millions facing acute hunger and mounting allegations of atrocities committed by both warring factions.

The scale of destruction across Sudan defies easy comprehension. Entire neighborhoods of Khartoum, once a bustling metropolitan area of roughly five million people, have been reduced to rubble. The city’s three interconnected urban centers — Khartoum, Omdurman, and Bahri — became frontlines early in the conflict, with artillery barrages and airstrikes devastating residential areas, hospitals, and infrastructure. While recent months have seen the SAF reclaim portions of the capital, pushing RSF fighters from some districts, the recovery remains extraordinarily tentative. Residents who have trickled back describe a landscape of gutted buildings, looted homes, and an almost complete absence of functioning public services. Electricity and water remain sporadic at best. Markets have reopened in some areas, but prices for basic goods have skyrocketed beyond the reach of most families. The World Food Programme has warned that Sudan’s agricultural sector has been devastated, with successive planting seasons disrupted across the country’s most productive regions in Gezira state and along the Nile corridor — areas that historically served as the nation’s breadbasket.

Beyond Khartoum, the situation in Darfur has drawn some of the gravest international concern and the most alarming allegations. The RSF, which traces its origins to the Janjaweed militias responsible for the genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s, has been accused by international investigators and human rights organizations of committing systematic ethnic violence against non-Arab communities, particularly the Masalit people in West Darfur. The city of El Geneina was effectively destroyed in the war’s early months, with survivors describing mass killings, sexual violence on a vast scale, and the deliberate targeting of civilians based on ethnicity. A UN fact-finding mission established in late 2023 has documented patterns consistent with ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, with some experts and advocacy groups arguing the evidence meets the legal threshold for genocide. The SAF, for its part, has also been accused of indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilian areas, including markets, hospitals, and displacement camps, with little apparent regard for the laws of war. Both sides have restricted humanitarian access, weaponizing starvation as a tool of conflict — a potential war crime under international law.

The diplomatic landscape remains bleak as the war enters its fourth year. The Jeddah-based talks co-facilitated by Saudi Arabia and the United States stalled repeatedly throughout 2024, with neither side demonstrating genuine willingness to negotiate. The African Union has struggled to present a unified front, hampered by divisions among member states with competing interests in the conflict’s outcome. The International Criminal Court’s existing warrants related to Darfur — including the outstanding arrest warrant for al-Bashir — have done little to deter new atrocities. Meanwhile, Sudan’s neighbors bear an enormous burden: Chad hosts over a million Sudanese refugees, South Sudan has seen hundreds of thousands cross its border, and Egypt has absorbed a significant but difficult-to-quantify population of displaced Sudanese. The humanitarian response remains critically underfunded, with the UN’s 2024 appeal for Sudan receiving less than 30 percent of the $2.7 billion requested. Aid workers who remain in the country operate under extraordinary danger, with dozens killed and humanitarian convoys regularly looted or blocked. Looking ahead, analysts warn that without a dramatic shift in international engagement or a decisive military outcome, Sudan faces the prospect of becoming a fragmented, failed state — with consequences that could destabilize the broader Horn of Africa and Sahel region for decades to come.