No end in sight as Sudan's civil war rages into 4th year

By Chelsea Robin | 2026-05-31

More than three years have passed since conflict broke out between rival armed factions in Sudan, triggering what the United Nations is calling "the world's largest humanitarian emergency".

The scale of suffering among Sudanese civilians contrasts starkly with the limited international attention the conflict is receiving, observers say.

"This is not just another conflict. It is a human rights catastrophe unfolding in real time," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement April 20.

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began fighting over Sudan's capital, Khartoum, in April 2023.

Since then, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, an unknown number of people remain missing and nearly 14 million people have been forcibly displaced, sometimes repeatedly, the UN reported April 14.

Some 10 million school-age children remain out of school. Sexual violence is rampant. A majority of health facilities are non-functional or only partially functional, and hundreds of medical personnel are among the dead.

Humanitarian groups are finding it more difficult and more dangerous to deliver aid to the 21 million people facing acute food insecurity, the UN said. In parts of Darfur, to the west, and Kordofan, in central Sudan, the conditions have reached famine levels.

In February this year, the UN's Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan reported that mass killings and related atrocities committed by the RSF in and around El-Fasher, capital of North Darfur State, in October 2025, bore the "hallmarks of genocide".

"Behind each number, there is a human face, a life, individual dreams and a future at risk," said UN expert on human rights in Sudan Radhouane Nouicer.

"After three years of destruction, it is clear that there can be no military solution to this conflict," Nouicer said in a statement April 14. "Instead, there must be urgent action by states with influence to exert maximum pressure on the warring parties to embrace dialogue and prevent further fragmentation of the country."

Diplomatic paralysis

International donors gathered in Berlin on April 15, the third anniversary of the war, and pledged $1.3 billion in aid -- more than the $1 billion raised at last year's donor conference in London.

While international fundraising efforts provide short-term relief, they fall short of what is needed.

"This is a multi-billion-dollar crisis over years," Christopher Tounsel, associate professor of history at the University of Washington, told AFP. "We are talking about displaced populations, children out of school, entire regions devastated."

Another breaking point: the warring parties are not involved in international talks to end the war through diplomacy.

"The Sudanese authorities do not accept the idea of placing the RSF on an equal footing in negotiations," Tounsel said. "For Khartoum, engaging in that format risks legitimizing a paramilitary force it considers illegitimate."

Khartoum denounced the Berlin meeting as "surprising and unacceptable." Sudan's army has long demanded the RSF withdraw from territories it controls as a precondition to any ceasefire agreement.

Meanwhile, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo said his forces are prepared to fight for decades.

"We do not want this war to continue," he told a group of soldiers at an undisclosed location May 7. But "if they [the army] want it to go on for 40 years, it will continue until they are uprooted," he added.

"Both sides are committed to military victory," Eric Reeves, a Sudan researcher at Smith College and founder of the NGO Team ZamZam, which operates at the Chad-Sudan border, told AFP. "And the level of equipment and sophistication has risen; this is increasingly a drone war, often conducted indiscriminately, especially by the RSF."

'Deproxification'

For the United Nations and other international organizations, a military solution is unacceptable.

However, non-Sudanese actors are helping keep the war alive, according to a May 20 report from Chatham House, a British think tank based in London.

"Externally procured weapons and cross-border logistical pipelines have sustained the battlefield capacity of both the SAF and RSF," the report said. "That support shapes each side's calculus, making continued fighting appear more rational than a negotiated exit."

UN expert reporting, Amnesty International and a Wall Street Journal investigation all allege that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is supplying arms to the RSF, including Chinese-made drones. Abu Dhabi denies this.

Meanwhile, Türkiye is reportedly supplying Bayraktar-type drones to the SAF, which Ankara denies, and Iran is also accused of supplying drones to the SAF, which the SAF denies.

"One thing is certain: drone strikes in Sudan have surged, accounting for over 80% of at least 880 documented civilian deaths between January and April 2026 alone," Chatham House reported.

Sudan's neighbors are also perpetuating the war, rather than seeking an end to the humanitarian crisis.

Egypt is a vocal backer of the SAF both politically and economically. Eritrea has hosted and trained pro-SAF militia, and was instrumental in helping the army retake Khartoum and central Sudan from the RSF last year.

On the other side, Ethiopia has reportedly allowed RSF fighters to train on its territory, while both Ethiopia and Uganda sit on the African Union's Peace and Security Council, which the SAF accuses of backing the RSF.

With Ethiopia and Eritrea on the brink of their own conflict, the security situation in the Horn of Africa is a virtual powder keg.

"What Sudan needs now is 'deproxification': the end of the process by which external actors fuel the war, with the SAF and RSF acting as their proxies," Chatham House said.