Anywhere from 20,000 to 150,000 people have been killed. No one knows for sure because it’s impossible to get enough reliable data. Over 7,500,000 people have been displaced—on top of the 2,800,000 in the country that were already displaced before this war. 25,000,000 people—half the population—are food insecure. For only the third time in the 20-year history of the IPC, the UN’s standard for food security, the UN has declared a famine. On top of that, there’s substantial evidence of genocide.
The situation in this country is, by most objective measures, the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Yet for some reason, this country doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves.
I’m writing about the war in Sudan.
Of course, there are lots of reasons why it makes sense that people in the U.S.—namely, college students— are more interested in and outraged about Gaza than Sudan. Because our country has invested in supporting Israel and our country has more diplomatic leverage over Israel than any other country does, we have a clear role to play in finding a solution to that war and the wider conflict. By contrast, the war in Sudan is much muddier, with two anti-democratic generals fighting to the death over who gets to run a military junta. There is a fundamentally weird network of support for each side’s military. The U.S. does not have friendly relations with either general—we supported the civilian government that the generals worked together to overthrow. But the scale of devastation in Sudan is everyone’s problem.
Some estimates suggest that there could be more deaths this year from famine in Sudan than the entire population of the Gaza Strip (~2.1 million). That’s about a third the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust—all dying from just famine (i.e. starvation and related disease), notwithstanding deaths from the ongoing war. I cannot use italics enough—that is horrifying.
If the scary part isn’t enough, there’s a big frustrating part. “Raising awareness” won’t fix the issue. As much as we may wish it could, the U.S. government doesn’t have a magic “stop the famine and genocide” button. It’s true that the UN’s 2023 and 2024 humanitarian plans for Sudan have only been half-funded, but the U.S. is already providing a colossal amount of aid to Sudan—more than half of all 2023 and 2024 humanitarian aid to Sudan through the UN plan has been provided by the U.S. government. Counting both years the U.S. has provided nearly 2,000 times the humanitarian aid that China has (Russia has provided more than China but none since last year, preferring to sell weapons to both sides). Student demonstrations in the U.S. won’t convince China to support Sudan’s people. Furthermore, the food security component of this year’s UN plan is fully funded. The problems go deeper than allocating money for calories.
At a UN Security Council briefing in June, representatives of the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF—the “official” military of Sudan, and one of the two sides of the war—denied the existence of a famine. It is worth noting that until recently, the SAF denied aid convoys permission to pass through a key border crossing in enemy territory, alleging it would enable weapon smuggling—even though the border crossing is and was controlled by the opposing army, the UN needs official SAF permission for its humanitarian work anywhere in the country. Last week, Sudan’s Minister of Finance called for the crossing to be closed again (lest you think that means the opposing army, the Rapid Support Forces, is “better”, know that it is the RSF—with its roots in the Janjaweed—committing a new genocide in Darfur). Back at the Security Council, Russia, after criticizing the U.S. for the failure of its diplomacy, said “it is unacceptable for the difficult humanitarian situation to be used as a pretext for intervention in the domestic affairs of Sudan”—in other words, it is the sovereign right of warlords to have millions of civilians starve to death, a sentiment that Stalin would agree with. Paralysis at the UN level makes it impossible to take direct action to stop the war and famine.
If the situation is so stuck, what’s the point in knowing about it at all? The simplest answer is that people should have some basic knowledge of such a massive catastrophe. Other reasons include the risk of chaos leading to regional destabilization and global terrorism—Osama bin Laden was based in Sudan for 5 years. But perhaps the most depressing reason is that Sudan demonstrates the limits of diplomacy and international cooperation. The U.S. and other constructive actors have to continue pushing for a just and lasting peace in Sudan, but for the foreseeable future the fate of Sudan’s 50 million people lies in the hands of two probable war criminals.
At Boston College, we’ve seen the vigils and vandalism—including so many stickers—promoting the lives of Palestinians and, to a lesser extent, of Israelis. I don’t need to “take sides” on the conflict in the Middle East to acknowledge that this is communicating a commendable concern for the lives of many innocent people. But if what you really care about is the universal value of life, you shouldn’t tunnel-vision yourself into only seeing one mobilizing slice of horror. You can’t call yourself a human rights activist if you’re blind to the death and destruction beyond your personalized feed—that’s a criticism that I’m sure pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli activists are both used to giving.
The more the electorate knows and cares about an issue, the more time politicians can spend publicly addressing it—and there’s a very problematic reason why neither U.S. presidential campaign talks at all about Sudan even though our country is among the loudest international advocates for peace there.
Read actual news, seek out different views, and above all, pay attention. We live in a democracy. That’s what we count on you to do.
