SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
humanitarian crisis
Why the US People Should Remember Sudan
In addition to presenting the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, I suspect the situation in Sudan holds an important warning for the movement opposing Donald Trump in this country.
Dec 16, 2025
Follow a line south and west from the Gaza Strip, continue through Egypt, and you’ll end up in another place where a genocide is in progress. It’s one we don’t hear much about in the United States, probably because it’s happening in an African nation, one of those places Donald Trump refers to as “shithole countries.” (Interestingly, another of the places he included under that designation during his first term in office was El Salvador, which is run by his new BDF—Best Dictator Friend—Nayib Bukele. Nothing like providing access to your national torture center to get you back on Trump’s A-list, I guess.)
The place I’m talking about is the nation directly south of Egypt and across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia: Sudan. It’s big—the 15th-largest country in the world and the third-largest in Africa—with an area a quarter the size of the United States and around 50 million inhabitants. Its name derives from the Arabic for “Land of the Blacks.” The population is 70% Arab, with the remainder being mostly of northern and eastern African descent.
Right now, about 45% of those people, 21.2 million of them, “are facing the highest levels of acute food insecurity,” according to the United Nation’s World Food Program. Famine has been confirmed in at least two Sudanese cities, with 20 other areas on the verge of it. And the situation is only expected to worsen next year, as what food stocks exist dry up and the fighting that has ravaged the country since 2019 continues. At least 12 million people have been displaced. To put that in perspective: Compared to the ongoing genocide two countries to the north, the number of starving people in Sudan is 10 times the entire population of Gaza, while the number of displaced Sudanese is almost six times that number.
In addition to presenting the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, I suspect the situation in Sudan holds an important warning for the movement opposing Donald Trump in this country. But more on that later.
Where Is the Coverage?
Like many people, I’ve spent the years since Hamas’ October 2023 attack on Israel watching the buildings fall down and bodies pile up in Gaza, even as I kept wishing that the US media would do a better job of describing what was happening there. In the spring of 2024, while American college students risked expulsion and deportation to raise hell about the genocide already underway in Gaza, the New York Times told its journalists to look the other way, as the Intercept reported, restricting the use of terms like “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “occupied territory,” and even “Palestine.”
If the media were slow to acknowledge an unfolding genocide in Gaza, they have given far less coverage to the one developing in Sudan.
By December 2024, the Times was doing better. It covered Amnesty International’s 296-page report accusing Israel of “carrying out genocide in Gaza,” despite, in the story’s first sentence, reporting that the accusation had drawn “a rebuke from Israeli officials who denied the claim.” Unfortunately, that story appeared not on the front page of its print edition, but on page eight. By July 2025, the paper was no longer afraid to use the “G” word or run a string of stories and op-eds, including coverage of the UN’s determination that Israel “was committing genocide against Palestinians.”
All in all, however, the major US media were slow to recognize the horror unfolding in Gaza. Even now, their coverage of Donald Trump’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s “peace” plan remains disturbingly credulous.
But if the media were slow to acknowledge an unfolding genocide in Gaza, they have given far less coverage to the one developing in Sudan. An important exception is the work of the Times’s chief African correspondent Declan Walsh who, along with Times staffers, won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for his work on Sudan. Too bad so many of his articles initially appeared not on the front page but inside the paper’s print edition.
What’s Happening in Sudan?
A civil war has raged in Sudan since shortly after a massive, nonviolent popular uprising dislodged Omar al-Bashir, the country’s longtime autocratic ruler, in 2019. The final push to unseat him came from his own security forces. A group of military officers then formed a Transitional Military Council, which initially agreed to establish a transitional government together with organizations like the Sudanese Professionals Association and an umbrella civil society group known as the Forces of Freedom and Change. An executive council and prime minister were sworn in. In October 2019, the National Endowment for Democracy’s Journal of Democracy observed that, “[d]espite these positive developments, doubts remain about the future of the transition.”
Those doubts would prove prescient. Soon after that article appeared, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) overthrew the nascent government and established military rule. Then, in April 2023, an old split in the Sudanese military erupted into open warfare, as a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) turned their weapons on the SAF. Fighting initially developed in and around the capital city of Khartoum, in the center of the country. The SAF eventually drove the RSF out of Khartoum and the conflict moved to the region known as Darfur, the westernmost part of the country, where the RSF had deep roots.
The RSF emerged from the Janjaweed, one of the groups responsible for a genocidal campaign in Darfur between 2003 and 2005. The roots of that genocide, in turn, lay in one of humanity’s most enduring conflicts: the one between nomadic herders and settled farmers, in this case exacerbated by a drought brought on, at least in part, by climate change. The Janjaweed supported the Arab herders against the farmers, who are primarily Black Africans.
The conflict over land use between farmers and herders is an ancient one. Those familiar with the biblical book of Genesis will recognize it in the story of the struggle between the first two sons of Adam and Eve—Cain, a farmer, who killed his shepherd brother, Abel. That tale reflects a tragic struggle rooted in deeply contested scarce resources that would have been as familiar to its original fifth century Middle Eastern readers as it is to 21st-century Sudanese.
The civil war now devouring the people of Sudan is also a struggle between two men who were once allies in Sudan’s short-lived military government, with the entire country as their casualty. They are the RSF’s commander Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo Musa, known as Hemedti, and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, leader of the SAF. The two of them had worked well together in the government of al-Bashir but fell out over how to integrate Hemedti’s RSF into the Sudanese military.
Having lost Khartoum for 18 months, the RSF besieged the Darfurian city of el-Fasher, surrounding it with an earthen berm, effectively walling in and starving its inhabitants. In October 2025, they finally made their way into the city, massacring civilians (including “500 patients and their companions” in the Saudi Maternity Hospital), while committing mass rape. As the UN top relief official Tom Fletcher reported, “Tens of thousands of terrified, starving civilians have fled [the city] or are on the move… Those able to flee—the vast majority women, children, and the elderly—face extortion, rape, and violence on the perilous journey.’”
According to the BBC, “The UN says less than half of the 260,000 people estimated to have been in the city before it fell have been accounted for.” Some have made a 44-mile trek east to a humanitarian hub in Tawilah. Others have gone much farther to a camp in SAF-controlled territory near the town of al-Dabbah, 480 miles northeast of el-Fasher. Along the way, they faced rape, extortion of anything they had left, and possibly death. “The RSF fighters stripped us of everything we had—money, phones, even our nice clothes,” one refugee told a BBC reporter. “At each stop they would make you call your relatives to transfer money to your mobile phone account before they let you move on to the next checkpoint.”
The Role of the US and Its Allies
While the Trump administration hasn’t exactly taken sides in Sudan’s civil war, that doesn’t mean there’s no blood on its hands. When President Trump’s erstwhile First Buddy Elon Musk spent a February 2025 weekend “feeding USAID [the US Agency for International Development] into the wood chipper,” he condemned thousands of people in poor countries to death. As the Washington Post reported, the “impact in Sudan was especially deadly.” In fact, “the World Health Organization says an estimated 5 million Sudanese people may lose access to lifesaving health services as a result of the US cuts.”
When US-supported soup kitchens were forced to close, babies starved quietly, their mothers said, while older siblings died begging for food. Funding stoppages meant that critical medical supplies were never delivered, doctors said. The lack of US-funded disease response teams has made it harder to contain cholera outbreaks, which are claiming the lives of those already weakened by hunger.
Sudan is also among the 19 countries for which President Trump has halted immigration applications, meaning that none of the refugees fleeing starvation and genocide there are welcome here. In addition, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced that it plans to “conduct a comprehensive review” of the status of nationals (or indeed naturalized US citizens) who received immigration benefits while Joe Biden was president. This includes several thousand Sudanese immigrants and refugees who arrived in those years. For the time being, Sudanese immigrants retain Temporary Protected Status in this country, which prohibits their being sent back to Sudan, until it expires in October 2026. (Oddly, Trump has revoked TPS for those from the separate nation of South Sudan.)
How are the SAF and RSF sustaining their capacity to fight, despite the country’s economic devastation? Where do the weapons and ammunition come from? As it turns out, a key US ally in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), appears to be the main supplier of arms to the RSF (although its officials deny this). According to Amnesty International, the arms for both sides come from manufacturers in countries that include China, Turkey (a US ally), Russia, and Serbia, in clear violation of the international Arms Trade Treaty and international humanitarian law in general. For the UAE, the motive seems to be maintaining access to the Red Sea, which lies along Sudan’s east coast and is the UAE’s crucial shipping lane. In addition, there’s gold in Sudan, which everybody wants.
After early attempts to facilitate a détente between the two sides, by February 2025, another US ally, Saudi Arabia, had tilted toward the SAF, in a widening rift with its one-time partner the UAE. General al-Burhan visited Saudi Arabia at the invitation of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. And during the crown prince’s November 2025 White House visit, he appears to have schooled Donald Trump on the Sudanese crisis, prompting the American president to announce that “his Majesty would like me to do something very powerful having to do with Sudan. It was not on my charts to be involved in that.”
I wish I felt a little more sanguine about Trump’s involvement in yet another sanguinary conflict, given his record in conflicts like Gaza and the Russian war in Ukraine.
Warnings for the US Democratic Resistance to Trump?
At the moment in 2019 when a massive nonviolent movement removed Sudan’s dictator, I was heartened by such a triumph of citizen organizing. Here’s something I wrote for TomDispatch then about these “spring stirrings” in Sudan and Algeria:
Meanwhile in Sudan, weeks of similarly massive popular uprisings have dislodged another autocrat, forcing that country’s military to remove President Omar al-Bashir. He is now reportedly in prison, while a search of his home turned up bags containing more than $100 million in cash.
As in Algeria, many of the demonstrators are young and in Sudan a majority of them appear to be women. The most organized among them is a group of doctors, other health workers, and lawyers known as the Sudanese Professionals Association. As in Algeria, the key question is whether this movement will be able to hold out against the power of the military until a genuinely civilian government can be installed.
The answer to that “key question” turned out to be: “Probably not.” In Algeria, the popular uprising known as the Hirak, or “smiles,” movement had indeed succeeded in ousting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after his two decades in power. Bouteflika resigned in April 2019 and, in December, a new president, Abdelmajid Tebboune, was sworn in. Things have gone downhill there since then, as the multinational think tank Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) reported in 2023: “Algerians’ hopes of a democratic country quickly faded into an aggressive authoritarianism. Today’s reality depicts a country that is back to pre-Bouteflika’s repression.” By 2025, it was clear that the army had become the supreme political power in Algeria.
Last February, the ARI wrote:
Algeria is currently going through a pivotal period in its political history, marked by the clear return of the army to the management of civilian affairs. This development is part of a process that has been underway since the fall of Bouteflika in 2019, and which has seen the military regime gradually consolidate its hold on civilian institutions while maintaining an increasingly fragile democratic façade.
As in Egypt almost a decade before, Algeria’s and Sudan’s popular democratic movements managed to dislodge longstanding dictatorships. But in all three cases, the military has since seized political control. In the case of Sudan, this has created the disaster I’ve been describing. Egypt and Algeria have been spared civil war, but they remain under military rule.
This worries me, even as I celebrate the massive and popular movements opposing Donald Trump in this country. Since his second inauguration, I’ve cheered our big No Kings and other demonstrations and delighted in the success of initiatives like the Tesla Takedown. Like many unionists, I’m hopeful that the labor movement will pull together a general strike in 2028, though I wish it could be sooner. If the Trump administration succeeds in contaminating the 2026 midterm elections, through voter intimidation and suppression, along with Supreme Court-supported gerrymandering, such non-electoral strategies will grow more important than ever.
But such extra-electoral tactics require more than a target (the Trump administration). They need a goal. In Sudan, the goal was to replace a dictator with a civilian government. Is Trump’s resignation our goal? Success would, unfortunately, bring JD Vance to the presidency, while leaving in place Trump’s anti-democratic handlers like Steven Miller and Russell Vought.
We need to plan now to maintain civilian rule in the event that Trump’s increasingly autocratic grip is indeed loosened and he is dislodged from his throne. At that moment, we will have created a power vacuum. I worry that the military Pete Hegseth has spent the last 10 months purging of women, people of color, and any taint of “wokeness,” rebuilding it in his own white nationalist image, could be the force to fill that vacuum.
That might seem unimaginable now, but so is almost everything Trump has done since his second inauguration. A military takeover after a citizen uprising has happened before in other countries. We can’t let it happen here.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'The Witkoff Massacre': Hundreds Killed or Wounded as Israeli Forces Open Fire on Gaza Food Aid Site
"The new U.S.-Israeli genocide strategy: starve the population, lure them with promises of aid, then kill them."
Jun 01, 2025
Fresh international outrage erupted on Sunday after Israeli forces opened fire on hundreds of starving Palestinians in Gaza gathered at a food distribution point where they had been directed by Israeli officials, resulting in a massacre described by witnesses as the largest since a new U.S.-backed humanitarian plan run by Israel was put in place last month.
Health officials in Gaza and multiple witnesses at the site near the southern city of Rafah reported that "Israeli forces fired on crowds around a kilometer (1,000 yards) away from an aid site run by an Israeli-backed foundation," according to the Associated Press.
"The international community must act immediately and decisively to compel Israel to end its inhumane aid distribution mechanism in Gaza, following today’s massacre near a U.S.-backed aid centre south of Rafah, where Israeli forces killed or injured over 220 starving civilians," said the Switzerland-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med), in a Sunday morning statement, which had personnel on the ground near the aid station.
"Let them stop these massacres, stop this genocide. They are killing us."
According to the group:Euro-Med Monitor’s field team documented Israeli forces opening fire on thousands of civilians gathered at dawn today, Sunday, 1 June 2025, in Tel al-Sultan, Rafah, near an aid distribution centre established by the Israeli army. Preliminary data indicate that the attack killed at least 31 civilians, including two women, and injured more than 200 others. Several remain missing.
The death toll is expected to rise due to the high number of critical injuries and the severe collapse of the healthcare system caused by the blockade and Israeli targeting of medical facilities.
In early May, as Common Dreams reported, United Nations aid officials and other humanitarian relief experts warned against the plan put forward by Israel and backed by the Trump administration that would allow a private and newly created Israeli foundation, euphemistically named the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to administer the delivery of aid across Gaza with security provided by the IDF and U.S. mercenary soldiers.
"There is no reason to put in place a system that is at odds with the DNA of any principled humanitarian organization," said Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), on May 9.
The controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been marred by controversy since its creation last month and denounced as operating as cover for Israel's ongoing atrocities against the Palestinian people in Gaza, said in a statement reviewed by the AP that it distributed 16 truckloads of aid early Sunday "without incident," and dismissed what it referred to as "false reporting about deaths, mass injuries and chaos."
Footage and testimony from witnesses at the scene posted online, however, made those claims look like lies:
Dr. Ramy Abdul, a professor of law and Euro-Med chair, however, shared footage of the scene where the killings and chaos took place and said: "The new U.S.-Israeli genocide strategy: starve the population, lure them with promises of aid, then kill them."
The new U.S.-Israeli genocide strategy: starve the population, lure them with promises of aid, then kill them.#WitkoffMassacre pic.twitter.com/Hq1O1evEm9
— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) June 1, 2025
As did others, Abdul dubbed the horrific event the "Witkoff Massacre," a reference to President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff, now in charge of brokering a U.S.-sponsored cease-fire deal between Hamas and the Israeli government.
The AP reports:
Thousands of people headed toward the distribution site hours before dawn. As they headed toward the site, Israeli forces ordered them to disperse and come back later, witnesses said. When the crowds reached the Flag Roundabout, around 1 kilometer (1,000 yards) away, at around 3 a.m., Israeli forces opened fire, the witnesses said.
"There was fire from all directions, from naval warships, from tanks and drones," said Amr Abu Teiba, who was in the crowd.
He said he saw at least 10 bodies with gunshot wounds and several other wounded people, including women. People used carts to ferry the dead and wounded to the field hospital. "The scene was horrible," he said.
Most of the casualties were shot "in the upper part of their bodies, including the head, neck and chest," said Dr. Marwan al-Hams, a health ministry official at Nasser Hospital, where many of the wounded were transferred after being initially brought to a field hospital run by the Red Cross.
In a point-by-point breakdown on Friday, Drop Site News' Jeremy Scahill detailed that Witkoff, through his negotiations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is trying to "strong-arm Hamas into a deal that does not end the genocide" that continues apace in Gaza.
After Israel last week rejected tentative language amenable to both the U.S. and Hamas negotiators, Witkoff responded on Saturday to an updated draft submitted by Hamas with a rejection of his own, calling it "totally unacceptable."
Meanwhile, the threat of famine for the entire population of Gaza continues—all with firm U.S. backing and complicity, infuriating humanitarians worldwide as the death and suffering mounts.
Reda Abu Jazar told Al-Jazeera on Sunday that her brother was among those killed as he attempted to retrieve food at the distribution site in Rafah.
"Let them stop these massacres, stop this genocide. They are killing us," she said.
Multiple deadly incidents over recent weeks at the aid delivery sites set up by the Israelis led Euro-Med on Sunday, following the latest massacre, to say "these incidents should not be dismissed as procedural issues fixable through operational adjustments."
"They must be understood within the broader context of the grave consequences of the Israeli military's control over humanitarian aid" in Gaza, the group continued. "It is inconceivable that the same entity accused of committing genocide for nearly 20 months can be entrusted with improving the humanitarian conditions of the very population it targets."
Euro-Med called for an "immediate end to the Israeli aid distribution mechanism in the Gaza Strip... as it has become a site of field executions and fails to meet even the most basic humanitarian standards."
The group called for the reinstatement of UN-led relief operations "to ensure the safe and effective delivery of aid to Gaza's population."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Mockery' of Humanitarian Law: Israel Wants US Mercenaries for Aid Relief in Gaza
What the Israeli government is planning is "not an aid plan," said one legal scholar, but rather "an aid denial plan."
May 05, 2025
Despite global outcry to end the "genocidal" assault on the people of Gaza, Israeli cabinet ministers early Monday approved a plan that could lead to the capture of the "entire Gaza Strip," prompting fresh warnings of a complete ethnic cleansing of the enclave coupled with outrage over a proposal to use U.S.-based mercenaries to be part of distribution of humanitarian aid.
One Israeli official familiar with the shift in military tactics told Haaretz that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear to his Security Cabinet that the new approach in Gaza will be different from what's been going over the previous 18 months in that it will shift from what were described as "raid-based operations" to "the occupation of territory and a sustained Israeli presence in Gaza."
Another unnamed Israeli official told Agence France-Press that the plan "will include, among other things, the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories, moving the Gaza population south for their protection."
"It is dangerous, driving civilians into militarized zones to collect rations, threatening lives, including those of humanitarian workers, while further entrenching forced displacement."
To support the occupation plan, the Israeli army, with the approval of the Security Cabinet, will be calling up tens of thousands of reservist soldiers, in the words of the IDF, to "intensify the pressure" on Hamas and "expand and intensify" operations in Gaza.
According to the Associated Press:
The new plan, which the officials said was meant to help Israel achieve its war aims of defeating Hamas and freeing hostages held in Gaza, also would push hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to southern Gaza, what would likely exacerbate an already dire humanitarian crisis.
Since a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas collapsed in mid-March, Israel has unleashed fierce strikes on the territory that have killed hundreds. It has captured swathes of territory and now controls roughly 50% of Gaza. Before the truce ended, Israel halted all humanitarian aid into Gaza, including food, fuel and water, setting off what is believed to the be the worst humanitarian crisis in nearly 19 months of war.
The ban on aid has prompted widespread hunger and shortages have set off looting.
In addition to expanded military operations, the Israelis also presented a new approach to distribution of aid on Sunday that would include the use of private military contractors, also known as mercenaries. By relocating the civilian population to the south and forcing people to travel for food, water, and medicine only to designated "hubs" for relief, humanitarians said the plan violates all principles of human rights and the laws of war.
The Washington Post reports Monday that "American contractors" would be used to carry out the plan, which was presented to officials in the Trump administration on Friday.
According to the Post, "two U.S. security companies are expected to be contracted to handle logistics and provide security along initial distribution corridors and in and around the hubs."
The companies, Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, organized and staffed a vehicle checkpoint along a major north-south road through Gaza during the ceasefire.
SRS, which is to handle planning and logistics, is headed by Phil Reilly, a former CIA senior intelligence officer with extensive overseas service who has held senior positions in other private security companies. SRS is to subcontract on-the-ground security operations to UG Solutions, headed by Jameson Govoni, a former Green Beret whose service from 2004 to 2015 included tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The security contractors are to be armed and have their own force protection. They will not have detention authority.
In response to the new distribution plan, the coalition of United Nations and NGOs operating in Gaza, known as the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), which operates within the U.N. Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), issued a harsh rebuke to the Israelis, saying that the proposal "contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic–as part of a military strategy."
"The design of the plan presented to us will mean large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies," said the HCT in its statement. "It is dangerous, driving civilians into militarized zones to collect rations, threatening lives, including those of humanitarian workers, while further entrenching forced displacement."
The group added that both the U.N. Secretary-General and the Emergency Relief Coordinator in Gaza "have made clear that we will not participate in any scheme that does not adhere to the global humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality." Instead of the plan presented by the Israelis, the HCT called for an end to the imposed blockade so that neutral relief agencies could bring in the necessary supplies to the suffering population in Gaza.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which helps distribute aid in Gaza and was presented with the plan, decried the proposal.
"After two months of devastating blockade and starvation of Gaza, Israeli officials demand that we shut down the universal aid distribution system run by the UN and NGOs like NRC," said Egeland. "They want to manipulate and militarize all aid to civilians, forcing us to deliver supplies through hubs designed by the Israeli military, once the government agrees to re-open crossings."
Adil Haque, law professor at Rutgers University and director of Just Security, said what the Israeli government is planning is "not an aid plan," but rather "an aid denial plan"—one that "makes a mockery of international humanitarian law."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Famine Spreading Amid 'Unprecedented' Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan: UN
"Hunger and starvation are spreading because of the decisions being made each day to continue to prosecute this war, irrespective of the civilian cost," said one U.N. expert.
Jan 06, 2025
Multiple U.N. leaders addressing the United Nations Security Council on Monday urged action to tackle the spiraling humanitarian crisis unfolding in war-torn Sudan, which has contributed to roughly half of the country facing acute food insecurity.
Sudan has been racked by violence since fighting erupted between the between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF)—the nation's official military—and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023. The civil war has also led to widespread hunger in the country.
Edem Wosornu, director of operations and advocacy at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told the Security Council that "Sudan remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions."
"More than 11.5 million people are now estimated to be internally displaced, of whom nearly 8.8 million people have been uprooted since April 2023," she said.
Wosornu spoke about the findings of the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report from late December, which stated that there was famine—or an IPC phase 5—in in Zamzam, Abu Shouk, and Al Salam camps, as well as in the Western Nuba Mountains, affecting both residents and internally displaced people between October and November 2024. The report noted that between December 2024 and May 2025, famine is projected to continue in the same areas and expand in the North Darfur localities of Um Kadadah, Melit, El Fasher, At Tawisha, and Al Lait.
"The main drivers of famine risk remain the armed conflict and forced displacement," according to the report.
The famine declaration for Zamzam camp, which houses hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons in North Darfur, came in August.
On the eve of the IPC's December report, the Sudanese government suspended cooperation with a global hunger monitor.
Wosornu in her remarks also lamented the death of three World Food Program staff members, who were killed when the agency's field office in Yabus was hit by an "aerial bombardment," according to the United Nations.
"Hunger and starvation are spreading because of the decisions being made each day to continue to prosecute this war, irrespective of the civilian cost," she added.
Beth Bechdol, deputy director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, also provided a Monday briefing to the Security Council, saying that "the latest reports on food security are the worst in the country's history."
"Let me remind council members that over the last 15 years, only four famines have been confirmed: Somalia in 2011; South Sudan in 2017 and 2020; and now Sudan in 2024," she said.
Bechdol highlighted a number of actions that the Security Council should aid, including using "political leverage to end hostilities and to bring relief to the people of the Sudan."
She also called on the body to support "immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access" and delivery of "multi-sectoral humanitarian assistance," saying that "while scaling up food, water, and cash assistance is vital, this alone cannot address the full scope of the hunger crisis."
Wosornu added that the Security Council should help "press the [warring] parties to comply with international humanitarian law," and mobilize international funding to address the "unprecedented scale of the needs in Sudan."
This comes a week after U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and two of her colleagues pressed President Joe Biden to do more to help the people of Sudan, including requesting an increase in U.S. humanitarian aid, specifically that a portion of that funding go toward supporting Sudanese organizations and entities that are aiding civilians on the ground.
This comes a week after U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and two of her colleagues pressed President Joe Biden to do more to help the people of Sudan, including requesting an increase in U.S. humanitarian aid, specifically that a portion of that funding go toward supporting Sudanese organizations and entities that are aiding civilians on the ground.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Thousands Feared Dead in Impoverished French Territory of Mayotte After Cyclone Chido
"You feel like you are in the aftermath of a nuclear war," said one resident. "I saw an entire neighborhood disappear."
Dec 16, 2024
Undocumented migrants living in informal settlements in the French territory of Mayotte were among those whose lives and livelihoods were most devastated by Cyclone Chido, a tropical cyclone that slammed into the impoverished group of islands in the Indian Ocean over the weekend.
Authorities reported a death toll of at least 20 on Monday, but the territory's prefect, François-Xavier Bieuville, told a local news station that the widespread devastation indicated there were likely "some several hundred dead."
"Maybe we'll get close to a thousand," said Bieuville. "Even thousands... given the violence of this event."
Mayotte, which includes two densely populated main islands, Grande-Terre and Petite-Terre, as well as smaller islands with few residents, is home to about 300,000 people.
The territory is one of the European Union's poorest, with three-quarters of residents living below the poverty line, but roughly 100,000 people have come to Mayotte from the nearby African island nations of Madagascar and Comoros in recent decades, seeking better economic conditions.
Many of those people live in informal neighborhoods and shacks across the islands that were hardest hit by Chido, with aerial footage showing collections of houses "reduced to rubble," according to CNN.
"What we are experiencing is a tragedy, you feel like you are in the aftermath of a nuclear war," Mohamed Ishmael, a resident of the capital city, Mamoudzou, told Reuters. "I saw an entire neighborhood disappear."
Bruno Garcia, owner of a hotel in Mamoudzou, echoed Ishmael's comments, telling French CNN affiliate BFMTV: "It's as if an atomic bomb fell on Mayotte."
"The situation is catastrophic, apocalyptic," said Garcia. "We lost everything. The entire hotel is completely destroyed."
Residents of the migrant settlements in recent years have faced crackdowns from French police who have been tasked with rounding up people for deportation and dismantling shacks.
The aggressive response to migration reportedly led some families to stay in their homes rather than evacuate, for fear of being apprehended by police.
Now, some of those families' homes have been razed entirely or stripped of their roofs and "engulfed by mud and sheet metal," according to Estelle Youssouffa, who represents Mayotte in France's National Assembly.
People in Mayotte's most vulnerable neighborhoods are now without food or safe drinking water as hundreds of rescuers from France and the nearby French territory of Reunion struggle to reach victims amid widespread power outages.
"It's the hunger that worries me most. There are people who have had nothing to eat or drink" since Saturday, French Sen. Salama Ramia, who represents Mayotte, told the BBC.
The Washington Post reported that Cyclone Chido became increasingly powerful and intense—falling just short of becoming a Category 5 hurricane with winds over 155 miles per hour—because of unusually warm water in the Indian Ocean. The ocean temperature ranged from 81-86°F along Chido's path. Tropical cyclones typically form when ocean temperatures rise above 80°F.
"The intensity of tropical cyclones in the Southwest Indian Ocean has been increasing, [and] this is consistent with what scientists expect in a changing climate—warmer oceans fuel more powerful storms," Liz Stephens, a professor of climate risks and resilience at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, told the Post.
People living on islands like Mayotte are especially vulnerable to climate disasters both because there's little shielding them from powerful storms and because their economic conditions leave them with few options to flee to safety as a cyclone approaches.
"Even though the path of Cyclone Chido was well forecast several days ahead, communities on small islands like Mayotte don't have the option to evacuate," Stephens said. "There's nowhere to go."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Humanitarian Groups Dread 2025 Aid Shortfall as Trump Term Looms
"At a time when the richest people on Earth can go to space as a tourist," said one advocate, "it is incomprehensible that we as an international community are unable to find the necessary funding to provide displaced families with shelter."
Dec 04, 2024
As the United Nations humanitarian agency and its partner organizations launched the annual Global Humanitarian overview on Wednesday to appeal for aid ahead of 2025, officials shared sobering numbers: 305 million people in dire need of assistance, 190 million people the agencies believe they can help next year if funding demands are met, and $47 billion that's needed to help the people facing the greatest threats.
Tom Fletcher, under-secretary-general at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said governments, particularly those in wealthy countries like the United States, face "a choice" as the world bears witness to starvation, increasingly frequent climate disasters, and other suffering in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere.
"We can respond to these numbers with generosity, with compassion, with genuine solidarity for those in the most dire need on the planet—or we can carry on," said Fletcher at a news briefing. "We can choose to leave them alone to face these crises. We can choose to let them down."
Fletcher and other humanitarian leaders noted that as of last month, just 43% of the $50 billion funding appeal made for 2024 had been met.
Food assistance in Syria has been cut by 80% as a result of the large funding gap, while protection services in Myanmar and water and sanitation aid in Yemen have also been reduced.
Fletcher said that with another major funding shortfall expected in 2025, OCHA and its partners are expecting to be forced to make "ruthless" decisions to direct aid to those most in need—likely leaving out 115 million people.
Fears that funding needs will be far from met in 2025 are arising partially from the election last month of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who pursued significant cuts during his first term to agencies including the U.N. Population Fund, UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
"America is very much on our minds at the moment, we're facing the election of a number of governments who will be more questioning of what the United Nations does and less ideologically supportive of this humanitarian effort that we've laid out in this report," said Fletcher. "But it's our job to frame the arguments in the right way to land and not to give up. And so I'll head to Washington. I'll spend a lot of time in Washington, I imagine, over the next few months, engaging with the new administration, making the case to them, just as I'll spend a lot of time in other capitals where people might be skeptical about the work that we are doing."
Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Secretary-General Jan Egeland, who led OCHA for three years, told Al Jazeera that U.S. funding under the Trump administration is "a tremendous question mark."
"Should the U.S. administration cut its humanitarian funding, it could be more complex to fill the gap of growing needs," said Egeland.
The U.S. is the largest humanitarian donor in the world, contributing $10 billion last year—but its donations pale in comparison to its military spending, which was budgeted at more than $841 billion in 2024, and the earnings of its top corporations.
As NRC noted, Facebook parent company Meta earned $47.4 billion—about the same amount humanitarian agencies are requesting this year—before income taxes in 2023.
Without naming billionaire SpaceX CEO Elon Musk—a Trump ally and megadonor who's expected to have a role in his new administration—Camilla Waszink, director of partnership and policy at NRC, called out the widening gap between the world's richest people and those in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
"At a time when the richest people on Earth can go to space as a tourist and trillions of U.S. dollars are used annually on global military expenditure, it is incomprehensible that we as an international community are unable to find the necessary funding to provide displaced families with shelter and prevent children from dying of hunger," said Waszink. "There is an urgent need for a revamp of global solidarity. Existing donor countries must ensure assistance keeps pace with needs and inflation, and emerging economies should compete to become among the most generous donors in the same way they compete to host expensive international sports events."
"It is devastating to know that millions of people in need will not receive necessary assistance next year because of the growing lack of funding for the humanitarian response. With a record number of conflicts ongoing, donors are cutting aid budgets that displaced and conflict-affected people rely on to survive," she added. "Conflicts and a blatant disregard for protection of civilians are driving massive humanitarian needs. It is essential that donors provide funding, but they must also invest in ending conflicts, bringing violations to a halt and preventing new needs from developing."
Fletcher noted that in addition to conflicts like Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the civil war in Sudan, the climate crisis is a major driver of growing humanitarian needs.
"2024 will be the hottest year on record," said Fletcher. "Presumably 2025 will then be the hottest year on record. Floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires affecting millions. We're on the brink of surpassing the 1.5°C in warming, and that will hit hardest in the countries that have actually contributed least to climate change. It wipes out food systems. It wipes out livelihoods, it forces communities to move from their homes and land. Drought has caused 65% of agricultural economic damage over the last 15 years, worsening food insecurity."
In conflict zones and in regions affected by the climate emergency, said Fletcher, "it's our mission to do more."
"My people are desperate to get out there and deliver because they really are on the frontline," he said. "They can see what is needed, but we need these resources. That's our call to action. And we also need the world to do more. Those with power to do more—to challenge this era of impunity and to challenge this era of indifference."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'A Dire Situation': Flooding Intensifies Gaza Crisis as Israel's US-Backed Assault Rages
"For many children, all they have is ruined bits of tent material swimming in swamp water in the camp they fled to for safety."
Nov 29, 2024
Flooding induced by heavy rainstorms in recent days has compounded the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, intensifying the already-high threat of disease as nearly two million displaced people struggle to survive Israel's U.S.-backed assault.
Save the Children, a humanitarian group working on the ground in Gaza, said Friday that torrential rainfall has transformed makeshift camps into swamps, impacting roughly 235,000 children who have been forced from their homes by Israeli attacks and displacement orders.
A Save the Children nutrition consultant who works in Gaza's flood-affected camps said that most of the tents "are uninhabitable" and wholly inadequate to withstand harsh winter weather. Makeshift tents that now run for miles along Gaza's coast have been badly damaged or completely destroyed in recent days by rising seawater.
"The tents are made of cloth and similar materials, and the ground is dust and mud, so tents get flooded within five minutes of rain," said the Save the Children consultant, identified as Mariam. "People's situation is miserable. A dire situation in terms of health, mental health, and immunity."
"A mother came in today and apologized for being late. Why? Because it was raining through the night and their tent was flooded," said Mariam. "The family had to go outside, and she had to carry the children until the rain stopped. Then they swept the water out and went back inside. Some people had to flee because big ponds were formed due to rain. It's a tragic situation."
(Photo: Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Reuters reported earlier this week that downpours "inundated tents and in some places washed away the plastic and cloth shelters used by displaced Gazans." The United Nations estimates that around 1.6 million people live in makeshift shelters across Gaza.
"Some placed water buckets on the ground to protect mats from leaks and dug trenches to drain water away from their tents," according to Reuters. "Many tents used early in the war have now worn out and no longer offer protection, but the price of new tents and plastic sheeting has shot up beyond the means of displaced families."
Aid workers have warned for months of the threat stagnant water poses to public health in Gaza, whose sanitation infrastructure has been decimated by Israel's large-scale bombing campaign. One Oxfam campaigner recently described the bomb-ravaged enclave as "a nightmarish landscape of insect and disease-ridden swamps and poisoned wells."
In a report issued in September, the U.N. Children's Fund and other organizations noted that "flooding creates stagnant water pools which can become breeding sites for mosquitoes, increasing the risk of diseases such as West Nile Fever."
Jeremy Stoner, regional director for Save the Children, said Friday that "children in Gaza are not only losing their lives, their limbs, and their loved ones—they are also fleeing their bombed-out homes for camps with conditions less and less fit for human life, as we see more and more restrictions on aid."
"As this deadly war has shattered the lives and futures of children for over a year now, we have seen access to critical things like food, healthcare, and sanitation stripped away," Stoner added. "Now for many children, all they have is ruined bits of tent material swimming in swamp water in the camp they fled to for safety."
Gaza's health ministry said Friday that the official death toll in the enclave has risen to 44,363 following a series of Israeli attacks across the territory over the past 24 hours.
Since Thursday morning, as Al Jazeera reported Friday, Israeli attacks in central Gaza have killed dozens of people.
"Israeli fighter jets have carried out an intense bombing campaign in the Nuseirat area over the past day, targeting residential buildings and homes, as well as mosques and other public facilities," the outlet observed. "One Israeli attack on Thursday struck a home sheltering displaced Palestinians, resulting in nine members from one family being killed. Israeli fighter jets also bombed a house in the camp belonging to the Dahdouh family on Friday, killing at least five people."
Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud said Friday that as Israeli tanks and armored vehicles withdrew from areas of central Gaza that they attacked in the preceding 24 hours, "many displaced people made their way back to Nuseirat refugee camp to check on family members still inside."
"Many were shocked to find out that their family members were not able to leave due to quadcopters constantly shooting at them," Mahmoud said. "Many people have been killed either inside their homes or as they were making their way out of their residential buildings into the streets, they said. They are literally collecting bodies right now from the streets."
Keep ReadingShow Less
UN Program's 2025 Outlook Warns 343 Million Acutely Food Insecure
"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil," said WFP executive director Cindy McCain. "Yet funding is failing to keep pace."
Nov 22, 2024
The World Food Program offered a stark warning for the coming year Friday in its assessment of the escalating global hunger crisis: Due to climate catastrophe and violent conflicts around the world, without adequate funding, "2025 will be a year of unrelenting crises" that drive more people into food insecurity and starvation.
In the WFP 2025 Global Outlook, the agency emphasized that protecting more than 100 million people from devastating hunger in the coming year would require a relatively small investment—$16.9 billion, "roughly what the world spends on coffee in just two weeks."
That amount is a fraction of what the world's wealthiest countries—particularly the United States—put toward military spending in a year.
In total, the WFP found that 343 million people in 74 countries are acutely food insecure—a 10% increase from last year.
"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil. Yet funding is failing to keep pace," said Cindy McCain, WFP executive director.
With $16.9 billion, the WFP said it could assist 123 million people who are most vulnerable to extreme hunger.
Among those are 1.9 million people who "are on the brink of famine," including those in Gaza, where access to food has been decimated in the last 13 months by Israel's near-total humanitarian aid blockade, repeated forced displacements, and U.S.-backed bombardment of the enclave. Many people in Gaza are now eating just one meal per day, and the United Nations this week warned of a "stark increase" in the number of households facing severe hunger in the southern and central parts of the territory.
More than 90% of people in Gaza are now "acutely food insecure," with 16% living in "catastrophic conditions," according to the United Nations.
"We urgently need financial and diplomatic support from the international community: to reverse the rising tide of global needs, and help vulnerable communities build long-term resilience against food insecurity."
People in Haiti and the sub-Saharan African countries of Mali, Sudan, and South Sudan were also identified as being most at risk for extreme hunger, with the region called "ground zero" for the humanitarian crisis.
Over 170 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are "acutely" food insecure, said the WFP. The region "accounts for 50% of WFP's projected funding needs in 2025," driven by climate extremes as well as violent conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Sahel region.
The U.N. Famine Review Committee in August declared that famine had taken hold in a camp where hundreds of thousands of people live in North Darfur, Sudan, after being forcibly displaced by the civil war there.
The U.N. also reported on Thursday that 25.6 million people in the DRC—or 1 in 4—now suffer from "crisis or worse" levels of hunger, driven partially by fighting between armed groups.
"In such a fragile context, the cost of inaction is truly unthinkable," said Peter Musoko, WFP country director and representative for DRC. "Together, we need to work with the government and the humanitarian community to increase resources for this neglected crisis."
Across Asia and the Pacific, WFP said the hunger crisis facing 88 million people is caused largely by "increasingly frequent climate disasters."
In Afghanistan, approximately 12.4 million people faced acute food insecurity last month, linked to the "devastation caused by heavy rainfall and flooding."
The severe impact of Typhoon Yagi in Myanmar led to "even more displacement" and food insecurity, compounding the effects of an escalating civil war, and nearly 6 million people in eastern Bangladesh were also affected by severe flooding this year.
"At WFP, we are dedicated to achieving a world without hunger," said McCain. "But to get there, we urgently need financial and diplomatic support from the international community: to reverse the rising tide of global needs, and help vulnerable communities build long-term resilience against food insecurity."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Devastating Blow to Humanity': Barred From Gaza by Israel, Health Workers Cry Out for Help
As the situation inside Gaza is increasingly described as "indescribable," medical NGOs blocked from providing care to Palestinians trapped inside besieged territory demand world leaders to stop turning 'blind eye' to Israeli war crimes and violations of humanitarian law.
Oct 19, 2024
As more Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed dozens of people Saturday, health workers from both inside and out of the besieged territory are again pleading with world leaders to bring an end to the indiscriminate attacks and imposed humanitarian crisis that witnesses on the ground increasingly say there are no words to describe.
At al Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis and elsewhere in Gaza, doctors and other medical staff on Saturday staged protests and held press conferences to call attention to the ongoing attacks in northern areas, including the latest targeting of Jabalia in which reporting indicated anywhere from 33 to over 50 people—including civilian men, women, and children—were killed.
"The world is watching, and history will judge us by how we respond to this grave injustice. I call upon each and everyone one of you to join this fight for the preservation of our shared humanity." —Dr. Khaled Saleh, FAJR Scientific
Al-Jazeera reports that hospitals, which have repeatedly been bombed by Israel over the last year, were not immune from this latest round:
Three partially functioning hospitals treating severely wounded patients and sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza are now out of service after coming under intense Israeli fire, a Gaza health official told Al Jazeera, as the siege on Jabalia enters its third week, with at least 33 more people killed in the northern area.
Israeli forces bombed al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia early on Saturday, and have also shelled Kamal Adwan and the Indonesian hospitals in Beit Lahiya over the past few hours, Al Jazeera correspondents have reported.
Saturday's attacks come days after Israel barred at least six medical service NGOs from continuing their life-saving work in Gaza. According to the Washington Post:
Two of those medical NGOs, Glia and the Palestinian American Medical Association (PAMA), confirmed to The Washington Post that they were notified by the WHO this week about the bans. Both groups have worked in Gaza for years preceding the war.
"WHO is concerned about the impact of these denials on Gaza's strained healthcare system," the organization said Thursday in a statement. It added that international emergency medical teams (EMTs) deployed to Gaza are essential to keeping the system operational, as only 17 of the enclave's 36 hospitals remain functional and "healthcare needs far exceed the system's capacity."
Dr. Khaled Saleh, chair of FAJR Scientific, which provides surgical expertise and trauma specialists to war-torn regions and was another of the groups notified by the WHO that it had been barred from entering Gaza, said in a statement that the move by the Israeli government filled him with "deep sadness and concern for the current state of our global family, questioning our shared humanity and ethics."
Blocked from providing aid to people in dire need, Saleh called on people worldwide to push for an end to Israel's blocking of vital medical aid and those seeking to provide it.
"This is a devastating blow to humanity, representing a level of destruction that we have not witnessed since World War II, yet our world leaders turn a blind eye," he said.
"As a member of the global community," Saleh continued, "I implore all of you who value compassion, ethics, and the sanctity of human life to stand with us and raise your voices against this unconscionable decision. Together, we must advocate for the voiceless and demand restoration of the fundamental right to access to medical care."
Israel's ban on the medical NGOs comes after a string of healthcare professionals who spent time in the Gaza strip have gone public with what they witnessed on the ground, telling tales of unspeakable horror and trying to shake the world out of its complacency on what experts say is a genocide in motion being carried out by Israeli forces.
Earlier this week, the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, said that Israel's continued blocking of food and medical supplies to Jabalia and other ares in the northern was "having life-threatening impacts" for the people there.
OCHA spokesperson Farhan Haq said the OCHA was calling on Israeli authorities "to allowed safe, sustained and unimpeded access to Jabalia and all areas of the north where people are in desperate need of assistance."
In a post on Friday, Oxfam International mourned the killing of Dr. Ahmad Al-Najar and midwife Laila Jneid, both of whom worked with Juzoor, "killed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia," the group said. "They were providing lifesaving health care in Gaza. Attacking aid workers is a war crime." Oxfam repeated its demand for a "cease-fire now" and said healthcare workers should never be a target.
In a dispatch on Friday, Dr. Taghreed Al-Imawi, Juzoor staff and an OBGYN doctor at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, described the untenable situation on the ground.
"The situation is beyond horrific and is very difficult and indescribable," said Al-Imawi. "Dead people, severed body parts and injured people everywhere. We are receiving emergency calls from all the areas of the north. Ambulances are not able to reach the injured. We have seen more than 23 pregnant women among the injured coming to the hospital since last week, wounded either by shrapnel or gunfire, suffering from fractures. Some were in a critical condition. Kamal Adwan Hospital and other semi-operational hospitals have received displacement orders but there is no way to evacuate in any case."
"The pediatrics section is closed as it is full of injured people," Al-Imawi added, "the surgery section is full of injured people, even the reception, the hospital has been shelled several times and targeted by snipers, people are terrified to come to the hospital now."
Having recently returned from a field mission in Gaza, pediatric nurse Becky Platt, working through Save the Children—who posted her testimony Saturday—described a situation on the ground that was "like nothing I've seen before."
Platt said the horrific situation is "both in terms of healthcare need and just in terms of the whole humanitarian context—seeing homes and landscapes completely devastated and seeing just the absolute level of human suffering and need as absolutely mind blowing."
❗️ “Gaza was like nothing I’ve ever seen before”
With Gaza’s health system decimated, children being treated lack adequate pain relief. Healthcare workers have limited access to morphine and are having to treat blast injuries with paracetamol.
Paediatric nurse Becky Platt spoke… pic.twitter.com/zsb4OIvcvI
— Save the Children UK (@savechildrenuk) October 19, 2024
"No child should have to be in pain," she said. "And it just feels like your hands are tied when you can't do what you know that you could do easily at home or in another context. I think that when it really hits. It's just—it's just not fair. It's not okay that we've got children with devastating injuries who don't have access to pain relief."
For his part, Dr. Saleh of FAJR Scientific, said it was up to everyone in the world to make their voices heard.
"The world is watching," he said, "and history will judge us by how we respond to this grave injustice. I call upon each and everyone one of you to join this fight for the preservation of our shared humanity."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Cost of War for Women and Girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The conflict raging in DRC is largely for the control of the country's important raw materials, with the most vulnerable paying the highest price.
Oct 14, 2024
Decades long conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has ravaged lives of millions. Nearly six million people have been killed since 1996 and the country has the largest population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Africa with 7.1 million people forced from their home or community. North Kivu Province is particularly impacted with almost one million IDPs living in makeshift camps with limited access to essential services like water, shelter, sanitation and food around the capital city of Goma.
Sexual Violence – A Weapon of War
One of the most distinct elements of this conflict is the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. From 2021 to 2022, there was a 91 percent rise in reports of gender-based violence (GBV) in North Kivu. Between January and March 2024, more than 12,600 cases of sexual violence were recorded. These numbers, however, are only the tip of the iceberg. Many survivors are unable to access life-saving GBV services; and many do not report abuse out of fear of stigmatization by their communities or retaliation by perpetrators. Both Human rights groups to humanitarian relief organizations report that tens of thousands of women and girls have been victims of systemic sexual violence, including rape, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution.
Most cases of sexual violence involve armed combatants and militias with majority of victims being women and girls—some as young as three years old and others as old as 80. These acts have profound and lasting health consequences for the victims, ranging from physical injuries and psychological trauma to the risk of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies. Unfortunately, 2024 has been marked by an increase in this violence against women and girls in North Kivu. According to a recently released report, We Are Calling for Help, Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provided treatment to 25,166 victims and survivors of sexual violence across the country in 2023. Between January and May 2024, it had already treated 17,363 victims and survivors in North Kivu alone – 69 percent of the total number of victims treated in 2023.
Displacement resulting from heavy fighting between the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) and the M23 rebel group has exacerbated the vulnerability of individuals to sexual violence. Victims are often attacked when they venture outside the IDP camps to gather firewood or seek food. The disruption of humanitarian aid due to insecurity has compounded the challenges. Women and girls are being forced to take greater risks to meet critical needs. Food insecurity and the lack of livelihood opportunities have also led to women being forced to resort to harmful coping mechanisms, including prostitution.
Urgent International Response Needed to Protect Women & Children
The situation in North Kivu is an ugly reminder of the human toll of armed conflicts, with the worst price paid by women and children. Despite the horrors unleashed on the most vulnerable, international response has yet to meet the need of the hour.
With 25.4 million people affected, DRC has the highest number of people in need of humanitarian aid in the world and yet remains one of the most underfunded crises. The United Nations $2.6 billion Humanitarian Response Plan to assist 8.7 million people in 2024, is only 16% funded. At the end of 2023, World Food Programme reported the need for $546 million to sustain its emergency response in the region over the next six months, or be forced to sharply cut assistance, provide reduced support to fewer people — and over a shorter time period. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, received only 41% of the required $298.9 million for the emergency situation in DRC. In the absence of sustained humanitarian support, strengthened protection measures for civilian populations, and increased funding for the Humanitarian Response Plan, especially for programs addressing GBV, displaced women are endlessly enduring violence day after day.
A Resource Curse
The conflict raging in DRC is largely for the control of the country's important raw materials—tin, tungsten, coltan and gold, collectively known as 3T or 3TG. Electronic products from cell phones, laptops to the surge in electric cars have boosted the demand and competition for DRC’s mineral wealth. 2018 Nobel Prize winner, Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor, condemned the global demand for these minerals for fueling conflict and consequently, rape in his country. In April 2024, lawyers representing the Congolese government notified Apple of concerns about its supply chain, stating “their products are tainted by the blood of the Congolese people.” International community and the multinational corporations who benefit from Congo’s mineral wealth have the primary responsibility to ensure the return of peace in the country.
Two neighboring countries, Rwanda and Uganda, are extensively involved in illegal exploitation of DRC’s mineral resources and the violence that has plagued the eastern region in the past three decades. The Rwanda-backed M23 has intensified its activities in recent years, resulting in the resurgence of widespread violence and massive displacement of people. For years, the United Nations has sounded the alarm over Rwanda’s continued assistance to the M23, putting forward solid evidence of the “direct involvement” of Rwandan Defense Forces in the conflict in eastern Congo-Kinshasa, as well as Rwanda’s provision of “weapons, ammunitions, and uniforms” to the M23 rebels. The United Nations has also implicated Uganda, which has allowed M23 “unhindered” access to its territory during its operations.
Despite this evidence, Western countries, especially the United States, have continued to provide support to the two countries, including military aid. This, despite the legal restrictions that are supposed to prohibit the U.S. from releasing International Military Education & Training (IMET) funds to countries in the African Great Lakes region that “facilitate or otherwise participate in destabilizing activities in a neighboring country, including aiding and abetting armed groups.” It was only in October 2023 that the U.S. State Department placed Rwanda on a blacklist for violating the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) due to Rwandan support for M23, which recruits child soldiers. Support to Uganda continues.
Armed groups, competing for control of profitable minerals, will continue to unleash terror and perpetrate violent crimes against humanity until the impunity for the warring parties is brought to an end; Rwanda and Uganda end military support for M23; and the international community, including the United States, suspends military assistance to governments supporting armed groups. If not, the price of war and conflict will continue to be paid by women and children—victims of DRC’s “resource curse.”Keep ReadingShow Less
See More Stories
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy