You Probably Haven’t Heard of the World’s Largest Child Displacement Crisis

Louisa Corbett

July 27, 2024

Sudan is currently home to one of Africa’s deadliest civil wars and the world’s largest child displacement crisis. 

But even though the 11 million displaced Sudanese people largely exceeds Gaza’s displacement count of 1.9 million people, Sudan’s current civil war is largely uncovered by mainstream media. While it could be reasonably asserted that most at least know of the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine conflicts, very few have heard of the equally catastrophic war in Sudan. 

Out of nineteen interviewees, only one had heard of a civil war in Sudan. She requested anonymity. 

“I barely know anything about it,” she said. “Wait, it’s still going on?”

The Sudanese Civil War is a conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdeh Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.

The SAF is Sudan’s official military force. The RSF, however, is not a rebel force: it is recognized by law and was “developed, tolerated, and sustained as an instrument of state power,” according to the United States Institute of Peace. While the RSF can more easily be identified as a corrupt institution, as it was formed to aid in Omar al-Bashir’s genocidal regime, both the SAF and the RSF abuse civilian populations, and both obstruct Sudan’s path to a peaceful democracy.

In 2019, the thirty-year dictatorial regime of Omar al-Bashir over Sudan ended. While in power, Bashir persecuted all non-Arab religions in the Darfur war, which was later found a genocide by the International Criminal Court and the U.S. State Department. Bashir’s rule was violent and aggressive, as he “turned a blind eye” to police crimes and government corruption. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, by the 2010s, calls for both Bashir’s resignation and a new, democratic government for Sudan swelled. To get Bashir out of power, the SAF and the RSF, led by Burhan and Hemedti, respectively, organized and carried out a coup (even though, during his reign, Bashir endorsed and employed the RSF). In mid-2019, Bashir stepped down, and economist Abdalla Hamdok took his place as prime minister.

Hamdok’s incumbency as prime minister was short – the SAF and RSF united to remove him from office in October 2021, reinstated his rule in November to appease international debt relief organizations, and then officially removed him from the government in January 2022. Since Hamdok resigned, Sudan has had no official prime minister. Instead, Burhan operates as de facto head of state; realistically, Burhan and Hemedti stand together at the helm of the country.

In January 2022, Burhan and Hemedti were left with the job of transitioning Sudan’s government from dictatorship to democracy, implementing national elections and guiding the populace to self-governance. By the end of the year, a two-year transitional plan was presented.

Many civilians rejected the plan because it allowed the military groups, mainly the SAF and RSF, to retain some state powers, and it failed to hold the groups’ leaders accountable for the abuse, theft, and massacres of the Darfur war and Bashir regime.

Both military groups tightened control over civilian populations, violently cracking down on protestors, as objections to the transitional plan increased into the spring of 2023. In addition to abusing the civilian population, the RSF and SAF found themselves at odds with each other.

The plan “elevated Hemedti to Burhan’s equal,” according to Global Conflict Tracker, and required the “eventual integration of the RSF into Sudan’s legitimate armed forces [the SAF] and placed both the SAF and the RSF under civilian leadership.”

Burhan and Hemedti, however, could not agree on a timeline for the integration of the RSF into the SAF. The power struggle between the two men, and between their military forces, climaxed in a set of explosions followed by heavy gunfire in Khartoum on April 15, 2023. Both the RSF and the SAF accused each other of firing first, and since then Sudan has been entrenched in a civil war that has displaced and killed staggering amounts of civilians.

Since April 15, 2023, over 12 million people in Sudan have been displaced from their homes. Over half of the population, or more than 25 million people, face crisis or acute food insecurity. Outbreaks of cholera, malaria, measles, and dengue plague the country as a result of limited medical care. More than 90% of the country’s children have no access to formal education.

Calls for peace, from international organizations, other countries, and the civilian population, sound relentlessly. While the SAF and RSF have agreed at several points during the war to ceasefires and peace talks, both sides have resumed fighting almost immediately on every occasion.

Nearby African countries, primarily Chad, are overflowing with refugees, and though the SAF has the most recent upper hand after receiving drone weaponry from Iran, there is no end in sight for the conflict in Sudan.