The international community should not turn away from the living hell that has unfolded for millions of people in Sudan – where conflict has now entered its six month.

Twenty years after the horrors of Darfur shocked the world the next generation of Sudanese is re-living the same hell except this time we are failing to pay attention.

We live in a fast moving world where media coverage rapidly moves onto the next crisis and rarely looks back. Six months ago, as conflict engulfed the capital Khartoum, Sudan became a story of airlifts and evacuation, which was similar to the coverage of Afghanistan during the Kabul airlifts in August 2021. However, the story of the humanitarian crisis was only unfolding.

Brutal fighting between Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces since mid-April 2023 has reportedly cost over 5,000 lives, forced millions of people to flee their homes and paralysed the country.

Sudanese refugees in Adré camp, waiting for a WFP food distribution. Photo: Leo Roozendaal/Concern Worldwide

Sudan now has the highest number of internally displaced people globally, eclipsing Syria with 6.6 million and Ukraine at 5.1 million people.

More than half of Sudan’s population (24.7 million people) need humanitarian assistance. This includes over three million children estimated to be acutely malnourished, 621,000 of whom face severe acute malnutrition.

There has been a near total collapse of the health, food and economic infrastructure. According to the World Health Organisation, about 65% of the population have no access to health services, and more than 70% of health facilities in conflict areas are not functioning.

Reports of atrocities, including sexual violence and civilians being targeted for their ethnicity, have prompted the International Criminal Court to launch a war crimes investigation.

Concern has been operating in Sudan since 1985. I was part of that first repose team and was to return multiple times over the years. I saw how the Sudanese, a proud, private people, hide their emotions when they are in pain or struggling. Resilience, self-restraint and courage are admired and even expected.

Concern and UNICEF staff working together to get medical supplies delivered to West Darfur region of Sudan as the conflict continues.

However, the last six months have pushed people beyond human endurance. The reports are harrowing. They are told by people who have witnessed loved ones shot dead, mothers who have become separated from children in the scramble to escape and tens of thousands of people arriving in camps with just the clothes on their backs.

For those who have managed to reach the refugee camps in neighbouring Chad and South Sudan, Concern is providing basic materials for shelter and survival, emergency nutritional support for severely malnourished children and mobile health clinics.

Concern staff, along with the aid community, were re-located from Khartoum to Port Sudan, which has now become the coordination hub and a key entry point for food and emergency supplies in Sudan.

In recent weeks, we worked with UNICEF to truck tonnes of medical supplies across thousands of miles to medical centres in Kordofan and West Darfur. It was a massive logistics operation in a country 27 times the size of Ireland. Distances are vast and it can take weeks for a truck to travel the 1,250km from Port Sudan to Concern’s bases in Kordorfan in the south of the country or the 1,092km from N’djamena the capital of Chad to West Darfur.

In Kordofan and West Darfur, despite having almost all our offices and warehouses looted, our staff re-grouped and re-started critical services for the communities and the growing number of displaced families.

Dominic MacSorley, centre, with members of the Concern team in Sudan in 2004

Mobile health clinics are back up and running and cash assistance is being provided to hundreds of households. Our response is a credit to the resilience of the Concern Sudanese staff, many of whom who have suffered loss and tragedy.

Aid is getting through, but it is not nearly enough. The conflict has resulted in the destruction of livelihoods, restricted access to markets and left over 16 million people highly food insecure.

Nutrition supplies across the country are running low and are threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. The consequences could be devastating. In 2022, before the conflict erupted, Concern was supporting over 200,000 malnourished children in Sudan. Many of those cannot be reached at present.

At the UN General Assembly in September a session sought to raise attention and international awareness on Sudan. The words were powerful and the appeals were clear, but these must be urgently translated into action:

1. Close the funding gap of 69% of the $2.6 billion needed to save and protect lives of millions of people;
2. Increase pressure on all parties to resume talks and cease the fighting.

The scale of the humanitarian catastrophe needs to be recognised and acted upon by the international community.

- Dominic MacSorley, Humanitarian Ambassador for Concern Worldwide.