While the world looks away, Sudan’s civil war grinds on. It’s close to three and a half years since the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia began their battle for supremacy, and the two forces and their allies continue to slaughter civilians with impunity. As a recent United Nations (UN) report has made clear, the killing is enabled by numerous foreign powers that continue to supply weapons, personnel and logistical support. They have made a civil conflict their proxy war, and their self-interest is sustaining the killing.

Drone warfare

Things have become relatively quiet in the capital, Khartoum, where the curfew was recently lifted following its recapture by the SAF last year, but the RSF still control significant parts of the country, with fighting concentrated in the Darfur and Kordofan regions to the west and recently Blue Nile state in the southeast.

Both sides now extensively use drones to kill civilians. In February, UN human rights chief Volker Türk reported that drone attacks had caused over 90 civilian deaths in the first few weeks of the year alone. That month, a suspected RSF drone strike on an aid convoy in South Kordofan killed three humanitarian workers and wounded four more. In March, drones struck a health clinic and a school in White Nile state. In May, a suspected SAF drone strike on a crowded market in Ghubaysh, an RSF-controlled town in West Kordofan, killed 28 people as they shopped for food and other essentials. In August, another likely SAF strike on a court session in an RSF-controlled village killed 35 people. Fuel trucks have also been targeted.

The RSF are attacking El Obeid, a city of around half a million people in North Kordofan that’s home to SAF bases and sits on the line between the two forces. RSF drones have hit hospitals and schools and damaged electricity and water infrastructure. Attacks on fuel facilities have pushed up transport costs, making it harder for people to flee. Fighting in the surrounding areas has meanwhile displaced people into the city and into overcrowded camps on its outskirts, where conditions are dire, with risk of famine.

People in El Obeid fear a repeat of what happened when the RSF took the city of El Fasher after an 18-month siege last October. The UN’s Fact-Finding Mission concluded that the ensuing massacre, in which the RSF killed at least 60,000 people and possibly tens of thousands more, bore the ‘hallmarks of genocide’, with ethnically targeted killings and widespread sexual violence.

Humanitarian and civic space emergency

The war has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. UN data indicates that over 11 million people have been forcibly displaced within Sudan or to surrounding countries, and around 20 million are experiencing acute food insecurity. Diseases such as cholera have flared up, and children are growing up without an education because the school system has mostly collapsed.

There’s a great need for the help civil society offers, but it’s hard for humanitarian organisations to provide aid because of security dangers and access and movement restrictions. The Sudanese government is also undermining the ability of civil society organisations to operate. In February, authorities revoked the licences of four organisations with missions to provide aid, help victims and promote peace. Authorities gave no clear reason, but when organisations provide humanitarian aid in RSF-controlled regions, the government can accuse them of complicity.

Journalists, particularly women journalists, are under attack, making it harder to tell the truth about what’s happening on the ground and provide evidence that may serve justice. In January, the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate recorded that 14 journalists and other media workers had been killed in 2025. In December 2025 it was reported that 40 per cent of women journalists had experienced sexual assault, physical violence, harassment or threats. Journalists are also at risk of arrest, detention and enforced disappearance. In February, RSF-allied police forces raided the home of Manal Mustafa, who’d provided training to women journalists trying to tell the stories of the war.

Foreign powers behind the war

Sudan’s diaspora communities continue to protest to demand an end to the violence and accountability for human rights atrocities. But they get little help from the UN Security Council, deadlocked by the self-interest of powerful states. In August, the US government proposed a resolution to expand an arms embargo that currently applies to Darfur to the whole country, explicitly including drones. The Sudanese government condemned the proposal and Russia rejected it, which, given its veto power as a permanent member, means the resolution won’t advance further unless significantly watered down. The current embargo, regionally limited and widely flouted, is due to expire on 12 September.

Russia initially sold weapons to both the RSF and SAF but has more recently swung behind the SAF, becoming a major arms supplier in return for gold and a potential Red Sea naval base. It’s joined by several other states with a direct stake in the conflict. The UN’s Fact-Finding Mission has set out how the SAF are using foreign-supplied drones while transnational networks are keeping the RSF supplied.

Alongside Russia, states that supply arms or other military support to the SAF, or have done so at some point since the war began, include Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Turkey and Ukraine. Those that have backed the RSF in various ways include the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Uganda and, most notoriously, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Weapons originating from countries including Canada, China, Israel and the UK have also been used. In most cases, states deny involvement.

The UAE claims no involvement, but there’s ample evidence that it extensively supplies the RSF with mercenaries and weapons via African transit routes, in return for gold and in the hope of securing a regional foothold, including a Red Sea base. This brings the risk of conflict spillovers to neighbouring states that cooperate with the UAE. Chad, home to many Sudanese refugees, is one of these. In August, it accused the SAF of carrying out airstrikes on a military convoy and fuel depot on the Chad side of the border.

The UAE funded Colombian mercenaries who played an active role alongside the RSF in the slaughter in El Fasher. It was recently revealed that individuals and entities linked to the RSF’s leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, have acquired properties worth over US$24 million in Dubai, likely paid for with smuggled gold.

The push for accountability

A new initiative to hold foreign figures accountable offers some hope of justice. In June, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and a group of civil society organisations made a legal submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC), asking it to investigate several foreign officials for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes in Sudan. The submission provided evidence of the involvement of the governments of Egypt, Iran, Turkey and the UAE, including in supplying drones, weapons and mercenaries, any of which, when supplied to the Darfur region, are in clear breach of the UN embargo.

The ICC has an ongoing investigation into the situation in Darfur, scene of a 2003-2005 genocide committed by both the SAF and the RSF’s predecessor forces when they were allies. The investigation began in 2005, and last year a former militia leader was sentenced for crimes he committed in 2003 and 2004. The ICC has confirmed that human rights crimes in the current war fall under its existing jurisdiction as part of this investigation, and in June it announced it had ‘concrete evidence’ linking RSF leaders to atrocities in El Fasher.

It’s vital that leaders responsible for human rights crimes face justice, and this must include the leaders of the countries waging a proxy war. If there is to be peace and justice, the impunity of the foreign powers that are sustaining the war must be challenged.

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