Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the top UN official in Sudan, told reporters on 10th November that warfare in Sudan is “verging on pure evil”, as multiple reports on Darfur’s escalating violence, sexual assaults, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and grave violations of the most basic human and children rights are being conducted on an ethnic basis.

A brutal war begun in this region on April 15^th between the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), after tensions between the two factions deteriorated following attempts to integrate the RSF into the regular army. This conflict has already killed around 10,000 people as of October 2023, according to CNN. Moreover, 4.8 million people were displaced inside the country, and a further 1.2 million fled to neighbouring countries such as South Sudan or Chad. Estimates tell us that some 25 million people – more than half the Sudanese population – need humanitarian aid and protection.

The UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, reports that more than 8,000 people have fled into neighbouring Chad in the last week alone. Also, reports of about 1000 people being killed by armed groups in Ardamata, in West Darfur, is alarming, as this area has been less affected by the conflict so far. EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, condemned on Sunday the Ardamata massacre and called for urgent international action to prevent “another genocide” in the region, referring to the horror that was perpetrated in the Darfur region twenty years ago. Borrell added that the latest atrocities appear to be part of a broader “ethnic cleansing campaign conducted by the RSF” against the non-Arab Masalit community from West Darfur, a statement that is shared both by Nkweta-Salami and by Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The ongoing war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, rival factions of the military government of Sudan, has been confined so far to Khartoum and most notably to the Darfur region, where a genocide is supposedly being perpetrated by the RSF against the Masalit people. The historical context of this war can be traced back to enmities between Muslims and Christians under Anglo-Egyptian domination in colonial Sudan, and to the protracted civil wars that ravaged the country throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Amidst this incessant bloodshed, the people of the Darfur region in south-western Sudan have weathered indescribable horrors.

In the early 2000s, Arab militias known as “Janjaweed” were responsible for committing genocidal crimes in Darfur. At the time, the government of Khartoum was held by Omar Al-Bashir, a dictator that became infamous worldwide for hosting Osama bin Laden in his country. However, protests bearing a striking resemblance to the 2011 Arab Spring eventually broke out in Khartoum and culminated in a military coup d’état against Al-Bashir in 2019. It is in this context that the rivalry between the SAF and the RSF began to emerge, in a state whose disintegration mirrors the tragic situation in Libya, which is still divided between the government in Tripoli and Marshal Haftar’s militias.

In conclusion, UN official Nkweta-Salami hopes that “the promises made by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to protect civilians and provide unimpeded humanitarian access are kept.” Thus far, unfortunately, these promises have not been kept. Optimistically, the UN Security Council meeting scheduled for 16th November to discuss the situation in Sudan will find a solution. Even if the odds are unfavourable, we must hope that the international community will take drastic action and provide assistance to people in need in the Darfur region. They have been forgotten for far too long.