The civil war in Sudan marks three years today, with a toll that places the African country at the top of the list of ongoing humanitarian crises in the world. According to the United Nations, 34 million people (about 65% of the population) are living in a state of urgent humanitarian aid. Of this total, 21 million lack access to health services and 4 million suffer from acute malnutrition.
Other figures are also striking: 14 million have been displaced, with nine million seeking safety in other parts of the country and 4.4 million crossing the border to neighbors such as Chad, Egypt and South Sudan – these countries are at the limit of accepting refugees, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).
A senior official of the World Food Programme (WFP) highlighted in an interview that several parts of the country are facing a hunger crisis that has lasted two years. “Millions of Sudanese are trapped in a daily struggle to ensure food security, basic dignity. Families have exhausted all coping mechanisms. Parents are skipping meals so that children can eat — and the children are going hungry,” Ross Smith, the WFP’s Director of Preparedness and Emergency Response, said in Rome.
Also read: Sudan: hospital attack kills at least 64 people
There have been increasing reports of attempts at genocide and ethnic cleansing in the region.
UN Women published a report which estimates that 12.7 million people – mainly women and girls – need support related to sexual and gender-based violence, an increase from the 3.1 million estimated in 2023.
The reality for children in Sudan is getting darker, warned Eva Hinds, head of communications for UNICEF, the child rights agency. More than 4,300 people have been killed or maimed since the start of the war, and more than 5,700 grave violations against children have been recorded.
Sudan’s youngest citizens are suffering the greatest losses in a war where drone strikes account for 80% of all child deaths and injuries. At least 245 of these casualties were recorded in the first three months of the year, mainly in Darfur and in the Kordofans, representing a sharp increase from the same period in 2025.
Humanitarian aid organizations also report difficulty in providing support. According to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), their teams treated, in 2025 alone, more than 7,700 patients for physical violence, including gunshots, providing more than 250,000 emergency consultations and carrying out more than 4,200 consultations for sexual violence.
In the same period, more than 15,000 children under five were admitted to MSF’s hospital feeding programs to treat acute malnutrition, which has raised the risk of death from treatable diseases such as measles.
The medical facilities are also targets. Since April 2023, more than 2,000 people have been killed and 720 injured in attacks on health facilities across the country. In 2025, Sudan accounted for 82% of all global deaths from attacks against health, according to the WHO. Also since April 2023, MSF documented 100 violent incidents affecting its teams, supported facilities and medical supplies.
Moreover, during the conflict, vaccination programs were interrupted and disease surveillance systems collapsed, accelerating the spread of diseases and delaying outbreak detection.
Also read: UN refugee agency will cut spending by a fifth due to cuts
Beginning of the Civil War
The country has always been a theater of conflicts, but the situation became more uncertain after the 2019 overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir, who had been in power since 1989, when he seized power in a coup. After protests by the population against nearly three decades of authoritarian rule, a joint military-civil government was established, but was toppled in another coup in October 2021.
This new coup was carried out jointly by the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and his vice-president, the leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti”.
Burhan and Dagalo disagreed with the intention of incorporating into the army the RSF’s 100,000 troops and the situation escalated into civil war. The fighting began on April 15, 2023, after days of tension, when RSF members were redeployed across the country, in a move that the army saw as a threat.
Since then, at least 59,000 people have been killed, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), though the real death toll may be much higher.
In June 2025, the RSF seized control of territories along Sudan’s border with Libya and Egypt. They subsequently captured el-Fasher, strengthening control over almost all of Darfur and much of neighboring Kordofan.
The regular army, meanwhile, controls the majority of the north and east of the country. Supposedly backed by Egypt, General Burhan has turned Port Sudan (on the Red Sea) into his seat of government, which is recognized by the UN.
There is a major risk that Sudan will be divided for the second time after the civil war. South Sudan separated from the rest of the country in 2011, including the majority of its oil fields.
