Exactly one year after violence broke out in Sudan, causing a humanitarian and political crisis, France is hosting an international conference on the subject on Monday.
France is requesting assistance from the international community and attention to a situation that, according to officials, is being overshadowed by the ongoing hostilities in Gaza and Ukraine.
Dozens of Sudan’s civil society activists are expected to participate in discussions regarding the humanitarian crisis during a ministerial meeting on political issues.
“The idea is to move this crisis up to the top of the agenda,” said Christophe Lemoine, a spokesman for the French foreign ministry.
“We cannot let Sudan become a forgotten crisis,” he added.
Officials stated that there were political risks in addition to humanitarian ones, such as the potential for Sudan to split into several states.
The United Nations declared lately that Sudan is going through “the largest internal displacement crisis in the world” and “one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory”.
Relief workers report that a year of conflict between opposing generals that began on April 15, 2023, has left the 48 million-person nation in ruins, but the international community has shunned it.
“The civilians here are enduring starvation, mass sexual violence, large-scale ethnic killing, and executions,” said Will Carter, Sudan country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council.
“Millions more are displaced, and yet the world continues to look the other way.”
6.7 million people have been internally displaced out of an estimated 1.8 million who have fled Sudan, many of them to neighboring Chad, which is also experiencing its own humanitarian catastrophe.
According to the French foreign ministry, just 5% of the 3.8 billion euro ($4.1 billion) aim in the UN’s most recent humanitarian appeal has been funded thus far this year.
“We don’t have the ambition to cover the whole sum, but we have hope that the international community wakes up,” said one ministry official.
The ministerial meeting, behind closed doors, notably brings together representatives from Sudan’s neighbours, as well as from Gulf nations and western powers, including the United States and Britain, along with regional organisations and the UN.
In the meantime, “a possible peace process, and what happens after the war” would be discussed by actors from Sudan’s civil society, including journalists, activists, and unions, according to an official.
Human Rights Watch’s Laetitia Bader expressed her hope that the meeting will send the belligerents “a very tough message,” which may include threats of sanctions.
She claimed that the fighting groups had attacked humanitarian personnel, plowed through foreign financial help, and barred access for relief.
“This conference is very important, but it should not become an excuse to turn the page and forget about Sudan, again,” she added.
