Satellite images show corpses piled high in El Fasher, North Darfur, awaiting mass burial or cremation as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia tries to cover up the scale of its crimes. Up to 150,000 El Fasher residents remain missing from the city the RSF seized in November. The lowest estimate is that 60,000 are dead, killed in a matter of weeks, as the Arab militia has ethnically cleansed the city of its non-Arab residents.

The city was the Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) final stronghold in the region until it fell following an 18-month siege that left El Fasher’s people starved. The slaughter is the latest horrific episode in the war between the RSF and SAF, sparked by a power battle between military leaders in April 2023. Sudan is now divided, with the RSF controlling almost all of its west and the SAF the rest, while fighting intensifies in the central Kordofan region. Neither side seems close to victory and neither shows any intention of backing down. The country may become another Libya, effectively partitioned between rival power centres.

Civilians are paying the price. Both sides have committed atrocities, including executions, extrajudicial killings and sexual violence. It’s hard to gather accurate figures, but at least 150,000 people are estimated to have been killed. Around nine million people have been internally displaced, and close to four million more have fled across the border. Some 25 million people now face famine, and diseases thrive. At least 40 people died in a cholera outbreak in August.

Civil society in the firing line

Civil society and humanitarian workers are responding as best they can, but they’re in the firing line. Most recently, six United Nations (UN) peacekeepers from Bangladesh were killed in a drone strike on their base, likely carried out by the RSF.

Civil society personnel and humanitarian workers face death, violence, abduction and detention when providing humanitarian assistance and defending human rights, including when one side accuses them of collaborating with the other. Emergency orders impose bureaucratic restrictions on civil society organisations and limit aid operations and freedoms of assembly, expression and movement, while troops also block aid delivery. Difficulties in humanitarian access and limited financial support have helped fuel the famine.

Reporting on the conflict is difficult and dangerous too. Almost all media infrastructure has been destroyed, many newspapers have stopped publishing and both sides are targeting journalists, with many forced into exile. Internet shutdowns and extensive disinformation campaigns obscure what’s happening on the ground. Mohamed Khamis Douda, spokesperson for the Zamzam displacement camp, exemplified the dangers for those who tell the truth. He stayed on in El Fasher to document daily struggles under the siege, providing vital updates to international media. When the RSF invaded, they sought him out and killed him.

The world looks away

Sudan is sometimes called a forgotten war, but it’s more accurate to say the world is choosing to ignore it – and this is a situation that suits several powerful states.

The Trump administration’s destruction of the USA’s aid programme hit Sudan hard, forcing the closure of many humanitarian initiatives. Meanwhile, states have left the UN’s humanitarian plan woefully underfunded, providing only a quarter of the support needed in 2025. The unwillingness of states to provide what’s needed was exemplified by the UK government’s decision to pick the cheapest of four plans it considered to help prevent atrocities.

Alongside neglect, some states are actively enabling the violence. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the RSF’s biggest backer. It continues to deny this, even though weapons manufactured by the UAE or supplied to the country by its allies have been found at sites recovered from RSF control. Without its support, the RSF would likely have lost the war by now.

In recent years, the UAE has shifted from following Saudi Arabia’s lead to cultivating influence among several African states, positioning itself as an alternative economic and security partner to China and western states. It has developed a series of ports around Africa, with one planned on Sudan’s stretch of the Red Sea. It has big agricultural investments in Sudan and receives most of the gold mined there.

The UAE has evidently concluded that RSF control is the best way of securing its influence and protecting its interests, regardless of how many human lives it takes. In response, Sudan’s government has moved to improve its links with Russia. It’s been reported that it may allow Russia to develop a permanent Red Sea naval base, something Russia craves.

The UAE faces little international pressure because western states that are strongly aligned with it, including the UK and USA, downplay its role in Sudan. The UK government continues to supply the UAE with arms in the knowledge these are being transferred to the RSF, while a whistleblower has accused it of removing warnings about possible genocide in Sudan from a risk assessment analysis to protect the UAE. The European Union and UK reacted to the El Fasher atrocities by placing sanctions on four RSF leaders and the USA is said to be considering further sanctions, but these measures never reach as far as figures in the UAE government.

The UN Security Council, where the UK is the permanent member that leads on Sudan, has also been predictably ineffective. Russia has said it will veto any resolution the UK brings. Yet in June, the UK refused an offer from African states serving on the Council on a rotating basis to take over responsibility, something that could have created more space for negotiation.

Among other countries with regional influence, Egypt strongly favours the Sudan government, and Saudi Arabia is somewhat supportive too. They come together with the UAE and USA in a forum called the quad, supposedly to address the conflict. Despite competing interests, in September there appeared to be grounds for hope when the quad brokered what was supposed to be a three-month humanitarian truce, followed by a nine-month transition to civilian rule. Both sides accepted the plan, only for the RSF to keep fighting, causing the Sudanese government to reject the proposal.

Pressure and accountability

Whether fighting halts may depend on the USA’s diplomatic whims. Trump has recently appeared to take more interest in the conflict, likely prompted by Saudi Arabia’s ruler Mohammed bin Salman, who visited the White House in November.

Trump may want to claim to have ended another conflict in his evident quest for the Nobel Peace Prize, although several of his assertions about bringing conflicts to a close don’t stand up to even superficial examination. Violence continues in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and along the Cambodia-Thailand border, and where ceasefires have held, they haven’t been followed by actions to challenge impunity and ensure justice.

Trump’s interest in Sudan may soon wane, as it’s hard to see progress unless the US government proves willing to pressure the UAE, including through tariffs, a blunt instrument Trump has used to force deals on other states. The fact the Trump administration currently applies tariffs at its lowest rate, 10 per cent, shows its continuing warmth towards the UAE.

Campaigners are trying to focus more US and international attention on the UAE’s central role in the conflict. One highly visible focus is basketball: the NBA has an extensive and growing sponsorship agreement with the UAE, part of the regime’s efforts to sportswash both its domestic repression and its extensive involvement in Sudan. Civil society campaigners are calling on the NBA to end its partnership, and their advocacy may help move Sudan up the US agenda.

Attempts to hold the UAE to account at the International Court of Justice have however come to little. In May, the court dismissed a case brought by the Sudan government on a technicality, because the UAE government had filed a reservation when it adopted the Genocide Convention in 2005.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) also has limited room to act, since Sudan isn’t a member. A 2005 Security Council resolution gave it a mandate to investigate crimes in Darfur, and it continues to collect evidence of human rights violations there, but not in the rest of Sudan. States on the Security Council should face the question of why they’ve failed to pass a resolution extending the ICC’s mandate to the whole of Sudan. Since this would cover crimes committed by both sides, it would be seen as a neutral measure. But given Russia’s and the USA’s growing hostility towards the ICC, they may be unwilling to legitimise it in any instance.

The international community has the power to stop the killing, but first it must acknowledge the role of the UAE and its western allies in enabling it. All involved in the conflict, within and beyond Sudan, must put aside their calculations of narrow self-interest. The UAE, their western allies and the other quad states should face greater pressure to broker a genuine ceasefire as a first step towards peace, and use their leverage with the warring parties to ensure they stick to it. Civil society and humanitarian workers are doing everything they can with diminishing resources, but without international action the slaughter will continue.

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