Where is the outrage over Sudan’s suffering?

In 2004, Eric Reeves wanted to draw attention to a hidden crisis in Sudan, so he wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post. His efforts—and those of a few other advocacy groups—paid off, and the genocide in Darfur became a household topic of conversation.

“‘Genocide’ was a word that had real resonance then,” Reeves said. The growing attention sparked global protests from London to Rwanda, calling for an end to the Darfur killings.

Now, more than two decades later, Sudan is experiencing the same level of violence, with accounts emerging of abuse, torture, and ethnically motivated killings of non-Arabs. Since war between two generals broke out in April 2023, more than 150,000 people have died, and more than 11 million people have been displaced internally in what is now the world’s largest displacement crisis. But Reeves said that the recent violence hasn’t received the same global concern.

“There’s not nearly enough attention to a catastrophe that dwarfs Gaza,” Reeves said, referencing Israel’s war against Hamas. Sudan is “by far the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world. … There’s no end in sight.”

The current conflict is playing out between leaders of the powerful Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group and the official state military. RSF Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo formerly served as deputy of the armed forces chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan. After the 2019 ouster of Sudan’s longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir, the two generals led a 2021 coup. But disagreements over how to integrate the RSF into the military and who would wield control spiraled into violence, sparking a civil war.

Last week, Sudan’s military declared the greater Khartoum area, including the capital city, completely free of RSF militants, a victory that followed weeks of destruction. In May, the RSF launched a series of drone strikes on Port Sudan in retaliation for its losses in Khartoum. The attacks targeted the city’s electricity and gas storage facilities and also struck densely populated residential areas, displacing more people.

In April, RSF forces also targeted Zamzam, the country’s largest displacement camp in North Darfur, displacing hundreds of thousands of people. At least 400 people were murdered in the violence that lasted days in the camp and also in neighboring city Um Kadadah. Many of the camp’s residents had fled from Janjaweed militias in the early 2000s and again in 2023, when the current conflict began.

“They fired highly explosive shells that burned down homes and some children inside these straw huts,” Saboura Abakar, a mother of four, told Sudan Tribune. “The soldiers were repeating abusive phrases towards the camp residents.”

The militia killed 11 staffers of the aid group Relief International. Reeves, who began a food aid project at Zamzam refugee camps five years ago, said his team was planning a joint survey of the camp’s residents with Relief International when the attack happened.

Residents still at the camp say the RSF have now turned it into a military barracks. Mohamed Khamis Duda, a camp spokesman, told Sudan Tribune that the rebels use them as human shields and abuse the women.

The attacks and displacement have left many without food. More than 24 million face acute hunger, according to the United Nations. Reeves noted that the rainy season is set to begin in June. Meanwhile, health agencies warn that the country is “on the brink” of a public health crisis as cholera, measles, and other ailments spread.

“The death toll is going to be staggering, just staggering, by next fall. There’s no agricultural production to speak of,” Reeves said.

In 2003, during Sudan’s earlier crisis, reports from advocacy groups like the International Crisis Group and Amnesty International helped drawing attention to the conflict. In September 2004, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the conflict a genocide as he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Reeves also added his voice to those calling for an international intervention.

Now, Sudan has mostly slipped out of the headlines and the minds of decision-makers in Washington. Reeves traces the waning interest in Sudan back to the Obama administration. He says the official policy at the time focused on building ties with then–President Bashir and hoping for a democratic transition.

“Anybody who knows anything about the Bashir regime or its 30-year history would know that was utterly preposterous, and for the Obama administration to have that as an official policy is staggering,” he said.

In January, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed that the RSF leader, Gen. Dagalo, is guilty of genocide. The United States imposed sanctions on Dagalo and his immediate family members. Last week, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce announced new sanctions on the Sudanese government over accusations that they deployed chemical weapons last year.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that in the early 2000s, American Christians also ramped up pressure on officials to respond to the Darfur war after learning that Christians were suffering persecution. Now, other conflicts are at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy such as the ongoing Israel-Gaza war and Iranian nuclear programs. Bolton pointed to President Donald Trump’s visit this month to the United Arab Emirates that concluded with more than $200 billion worth of deals.

“Some of these issues that should be on decision makers’ list of priorities are not, and, as I said, there’s no good answer for it,” he said. “What happened with Sudan is not atypical of what’s happened in other crises in Africa, both military hostilities, political crises, spreads of pandemics, things like that.”

On May 19, Sudan’s army chief appointed a prime minister—the first since the war began. Kamil al-Taib Idris, who formerly served in the United Nations, is now tasked with forming a transitional government. The move comes more than a month after the RSF declared the formation of a rival government.

Bolton, who also briefly served as national security adviser under the first Trump administration, pushed for a more comprehensive Africa strategy to avoid losing track of key conflicts. He also called for the United Nations to appoint an American envoy respected by both sides to serve as an intermediary.

But even that is a complex step. “Who’s going to get amnesty? Who’s going to leave the country?” he said. “So there are a lot of social issues among the leadership that have to be worked out.”