The News
The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting today to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.
At least 10 million people have been displaced since the onset of the war 18 months ago, while more than half of the country’s population is at risk of hunger.
Writing in Foreign Policy, the former head of the UN’s mission in Rwanda, who served during the country’s 1994 genocide, called on the Security Council to act swiftly to stop the rampant, ethnically motivated violence, and the widespread human rights abuses in Sudan. “The UN made a tragic mistake in waiting too long to respond to the genocide in Rwanda,” Roméo Dallaire wrote. “It must not do so again.”
SIGNALS
Sudan crisis has become the world’s “forgotten war”
Foreign aid to Sudan is dwarfed by that allocated to other global conflicts like Gaza and Ukraine, a lack that the head of the World Health Organization has previously criticized as indicative of world governments’ “really low” attention on Sudan and Africa more broadly, suggesting the reason may be partly to do with race, the BBC reported. Ultimately, the global humanitarian system is facing its “worst funding gap” in years, while the need is “greater than ever,” the Council on Foreign Relations reported. “There is this, quite frankly, quite tired and racist idea that Sudan and Africa in general is this place where war is not only inevitable, but perpetual,” a Sudanese analyst told the think tank.
Concern mounts over conflict’s effect on Sudan’s neighbors
The war in Sudan is likely to have an outsized economic impact on surrounding nations, the International Monetary Fund told AFP last week. Those countries, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea, and South Sudan, face “their own challenges,” and being “confronted with the refugees, the security issues, the trade issues, is very challenging for their growth,” the IMF’s deputy director for Africa said. The UN Security Council could seek to engage some African countries in the peace-keeping process, potentially through an African Union-lead protection force, the Sudan Tribune wrote, however, it is unlikely that a UN peace-keeping mission will be deployed due to the “current conditions” in the country.