On a clear night a year ago, a dozen heavily armed fighters stormed Omaima Farooq's home in an upscale neighborhood in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. At gunpoint, he whipped and slapped the woman and terrorized her children. He then threw them out of the fenced two-storey house.
“Since then, our lives have been ruined,” said the 45-year-old school teacher. “Everything has changed this year.”
Ms. Farooq, a widow and their four children now live in a small village outside the central city of Wad Madani, 136 km southeast of Khartoum. As international aid groups cannot reach the village, they rely on the help of villagers and philanthropists.
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Sudan has been torn by war for over a year now, since tensions between its military and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into street clashes in the capital in mid-April 2023. The struggle spread rapidly across the country.
The conflict has been overshadowed by the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which has caused a massive humanitarian crisis for Palestinians since October and threatens famine in the territory.
But Sudan is still facing a massive hunger crisis, aid workers said. Food production and distribution networks were broken and aid agencies could not reach the worst-affected areas.
At the same time, the conflict has brought widespread reports of atrocities, including killings, displacement and rape, particularly in the capital region and in the western region of Darfur.
Justin Brady, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Sudan (OCHA), said tens or hundreds of thousands of people could die from malnutrition-related causes in the coming months.
“It's going to get ugly very quickly unless we can overcome the resource challenges and the access challenges,” Mr Brady said. The world, he said, needs to take swift action to put pressure on both sides to stop the fighting and raise funds for the humanitarian effort.
'International negligence'
But the international community has paid little attention. The UN humanitarian campaign needs about $2.7 billion this year to get food, health and other supplies to 24 million people in Sudan – half its population of 51 million. So far, according to OCHA, funders have given only $145 million, about 5%.
“The level of international neglect is shocking,” Christos Christou, president of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said in a recent statement.
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The fighting situation on the ground has worsened.
The military led by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the RSF led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo carved out Khartoum and fired indiscriminately at each other. RSF forces have occupied much of Darfur, while General Burhan has moved the government and his headquarters to the Red Sea port of Port Sudan.
The Sudanese Unit for Combating Violence Against Women, a government agency, has recorded at least 159 cases of rape and gang-rape in the past year, almost all in Khartoum and Darfur. The figure represents the tip of the iceberg, as many victims do not speak out for fear of reprisal or the stigma associated with rape, said Sulima Ishaq Sharif, head of the organization.
In 2021, General Burhan and General Dagalo were uneasy allies who led a military coup. He overthrew an internationally recognized civilian government that was supposed to lead Sudan's democratic transition after the 2019 military ouster of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir amid a popular uprising. The generals subsequently fell into a power struggle.
The situation is dire in Darfur, where the RSF and its allies are accused of rampant sexual violence and ethnic attacks on African tribal areas. The International Criminal Court said it was investigating new allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the region, which was the scene of a genocidal war in the 2000s.
According to a report by UN experts to the Security Council earlier this year, a series of attacks by the RSF and allied forces on the ethnic African Masalit tribe in Jenena, the capital of West Darfur, near the border with Chad, killed 10,000 to 15,000 people. It said Darfur was experiencing “its worst violence since 2005”.
Adam Rizal, spokesman for the Coordination of Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, said eight out of every 10 families in the camps eat only one meal a day because aid groups are unable to reach Darfur's camps for displaced people.
In the Kelma camp in South Darfur province, an average of three children die every 12 hours, most from diseases related to malnutrition, he said. He said that 14 to 18 cases of malnutrition are registered daily in the medical center in the camp, mostly children and pregnant women.
Not including the Geneina killings, the war has killed at least 14,600 people across Sudan and created the world's largest displacement crisis, according to the UN. More than 8 million people have been driven from their homes, fleeing to safer areas within Sudan or to neighboring countries.
Many flee again and again as the war drags on.
Aid workers say world action must be taken.
“Sudan has been described as a forgotten crisis. I'm starting to wonder how many people knew about it enough to forget about it,” Mr. Brady said. “There are others that have more attention than Sudan. I don't like to compare crises. It is like comparing two cancer patients. … They both need to be treated.