What does NRC | think? More media attention for Sudan leads to more diplomats going to Sudan

Twenty years ago, the world was shocked by the atrocities and human rights violations in Darfur, the UN refugee agency wrote UNHCR last week. The organization emphatically does this moral appeal on the rest of the world: “It is a shame that the atrocities of twenty years ago are happening again and that so little attention is being paid to them.” In other words: international policy towards Darfur is failing. And that is shocking for an area where the first ethnic cleansing of the 21st century took place twenty years ago, when around 300,000 people were murdered. And shocking for an area where in a now seven-month war, according to the most conservative estimates, 10,000 people have been killed, 4.8 million people have fled and this month hundreds of Masalit were murdered by the paramilitary RSF, including in a Sudanese displaced persons camp .

Sudan is “the country that carried the promise of freedom in 2019 and has now found itself at dizzying speed on the brink of ethnic cleansing,” summarized The Guardian this week the situation in Sudan together after EU foreign chief Josep Borrell spoke after the murder of the Masalit at the beginning of this month about ‘a new genocide‘. At a time when discussions are taking place at every diplomatic level about Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, it is striking how little diplomatic attention there is for Sudan. As has often happened in history, the disaster in eastern Africa is largely outside the scope of the West’s attention.

In 2019, there seemed to be some reason for optimism: America and Sudan agreed to exchange ambassadors and the US removed the country from the list of potential terrorist hotspots. In 2023, there is no longer any political pressure from the US; America has less and less need to act as the world’s policeman and Sudan feels that. The African Union has also hardly intervened diplomatically since Sudan was expelled from that Union in 2021. And so Sudan increasingly comes into the Arab sphere of influence, and the war is increasingly seen as a Middle East-related conflict. The United Arab Emirates and the Wagner Group have now had free rein for months to support the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in order to increase their sphere of influence and have access to raw materials. Mercenaries from Chad, Libya and Niger move to Darfur with the main aim of plundering African peoples.

The war between the Israelis and the Palestinians is partly waged through the media and followed worldwide. Meanwhile, a silent disaster is unfolding in Sudan. Partly under the influence of the media, the call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is becoming increasingly louder. If only there had been more media attention for Sudan, in the hope that it would result in a more serious search for diplomatic solutions.

After all, neglect leads to ignoring, ignoring is the basic ingredient for a disaster. To avoid having to look back on an ignored humanitarian disaster in a few years’ time, it is important to put Sudan on the map in order to put pressure on international diplomacy. Because without a diplomatic solution, trust between different population groups will only continue to be broken down. When people with wounded souls face each other for longer and longer, the next ethnic cleansing is only a matter of time.

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