Cameron Hudson in Persuasion: History is repeating itself in Sudan. Tensions between rival security factions, which spilled out last April into open conflict, have rapidly created the world’s largest displacement crisis and food security crisis. Nearly half of the country’s 50 million people are in desperate need of food aid that is not reaching them, either because of access constraints or because it is simply not available.
For those tracking events in the country, a seemingly endless thread of headlines and editorials lament this “forgotten conflict.” But this is the wrong framing. The crisis in Sudan is neither forgotten nor ignored. It is de-prioritized. And that is worse.
The fact is that we know far more about the unfolding crisis today than we did 20 years ago when the Darfur region first became a household name. Long before Starlink brought internet to the furthest corners of the country, pricey Thuraya satellite phones were the only communications lifeline any Darfuri had to tell their stories to Western human rights activists, researchers, and UN officials. Intrepid war correspondents occasionally crossed, illegally, into Darfur’s war zone to report on the blatant atrocities being committed. Later on, the first commercially available satellite imagery, then a novelty, was used to document the full scale of destruction.
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