Sudan’s ‘Invisible’ Catastrophe: Why the World’s Largest Displacement Crisis Barely Registers

As 12 million Sudanese are uprooted and up to 30 million need humanitarian assistance, Sudan has quietly become the world’s largest displacement crisis and one of its deadliest wars since the turn of the century. Yet it remains largely absent from global political agendas and news cycles dominated by Ukraine and Gaza. Understanding why Sudan is so neglected is essential to understanding how modern humanitarian priorities are set – and who is allowed to die in silence.

How Sudan Got Here: A Crisis Decades in the Making

The current war, which erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is not an aberration; it is the culmination of decades of political engineering, militia creation, and international short-termism.

To see the pattern, you have to go back at least to the early 2000s:

• Darfur and the birth of the RSF: During the Darfur conflict starting in 2003, the regime of Omar al-Bashir armed and deployed Arab militias known as the Janjaweed to crush rebellions. These militias, blamed for genocide and mass atrocities, were later formalized into the RSF – essentially institutionalizing a mercenary force with its own command structure and economic networks.
• Militarized state-building: Rather than building accountable institutions, Khartoum relied on a parallel security state. The army, intelligence services, and militias competed for power, money, and foreign backing. This set up the exact kind of “dual-sovereign” structure that makes civil war almost inevitable once a central figure like Bashir falls.
• Oil, secession, and economic collapse: South Sudan’s independence in 2011 stripped Khartoum of most oil revenue. Economic decline followed, contributing to the 2018–2019 popular uprising that toppled Bashir, but also leaving the security forces grasping for new sources of wealth – including gold, smuggling, and foreign mercenary contracts.
• The failed transition (2019–2021): After Bashir’s fall, civilians and generals agreed to a power-sharing deal. On paper, it was a roadmap to democracy; in practice, it preserved the armed elites’ grip on security and money. The RSF under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) and the SAF under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan both emerged from the old regime with little incentive to genuinely cede power.
• The 2021 coup and countdown to war: The joint SAF–RSF coup against the civilian-led transition in October 2021 removed the only meaningful civilian brake on militarized politics. For months, the two rival centers of power bargained over how and when the RSF would be integrated into the army – a core trigger of the April 2023 explosion.

The current mass displacement is thus rooted in structural decisions: to build rule on militias, to prioritize short-term stability over reform, and to treat Darfur-era atrocities as manageable collateral rather than a warning siren. The international community largely went along, channeling aid through military-linked authorities and praising “stability” even as the seeds of this war were planted.

Why Sudan’s Horror Is So Invisible

Sudan’s war is not smaller than the conflicts dominating Western headlines; it is simply less strategically convenient and harder to package into familiar narratives. Several overlapping dynamics explain this invisibility.

1. No simple good-versus-evil storyline

In Ukraine, the invasion narrative is stark: a sovereign country attacked by a powerful neighbor. In Gaza, the Israel–Palestine conflict taps into long-standing global political and identity cleavages. Sudan, by contrast, is a complex confrontation between two deeply compromised armed actors – both implicated in past and present abuses.

That complexity doesn’t play well in media or political messaging. Policymakers prefer conflicts where they can champion one side, or at least where the global ideological stakes are clear. Sudan offers neither. The victims are overwhelmingly civilians, but there is no easy “ally” to rally behind.

2. Weak great-power incentives

As Caroline Rose notes in the story, Sudan is not a theater of overt great-power competition on the scale of Ukraine or the Middle East. That doesn’t mean external interests are absent – the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia, and others have varying ties to Sudanese actors – but the conflict is not framed as a decisive battleground between the U.S. and its main geopolitical rivals.

In modern diplomacy, where high-level attention is finite and often driven by strategic rivalry, conflicts that don’t shift the balance between major powers struggle for sustained engagement. Sudan falls into this category, despite its scale.

3. Access problems and information darkness

Both the SAF and RSF have blocked or tightly controlled access for journalists and aid agencies. The SAF cites sovereignty to expel or restrict humanitarian workers; the RSF has been implicated in attacks on medical facilities and aid staff, including the alleged killing of hundreds at the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El Fasher.

This has several consequences:

• It is extremely difficult to document atrocities in real time, slowing investigations and dulling public outrage.
• Images and videos – which often drive global attention – are much scarcer than in Gaza or Ukraine, where media and citizen reporting are far more accessible.
• Death tolls vary widely: estimates range from ~100,000 to ~400,000 killed. That uncertainty makes it easier for governments to downplay the scale.

4. Racialized and regional double standards

There is an uncomfortable but unavoidable issue: wars in Africa, especially in black-majority countries, consistently get less sustained coverage and diplomatic urgency than conflicts in Europe or the Middle East, even when casualties are comparable or higher. The same pattern was seen with the Rwandan genocide and repeated crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Sudan is not an exception; it is an indictment of that pattern. The fact that a famine-level emergency affecting tens of millions and a displacement crisis of 12 million people can be described as the “forgotten war” is not just a media failure – it reflects whose lives count most in the hierarchy of global concern.

The Humanitarian and Political Cost of Paralysis

Beyond the harrowing stories of mass rape, ethnic targeting, and drone strikes on schools and hospitals, Sudan’s war is reshaping the humanitarian landscape of an entire region.

• World’s largest displacement crisis: 12 million forcibly displaced in less than two years is an astonishing figure. For comparison, Syria’s civil war displaced about half its population over more than a decade; Sudan is approaching similar proportions at far greater speed.
• Food insecurity and looming famine: About 21.2 million Sudanese – nearly 45% of the population – face high levels of acute food insecurity. This is not just about hunger; prolonged malnutrition in children can permanently stunt physical and cognitive development, shaping the country’s human capital for generations.
• Health system collapse: When hospitals become targets, as in South Kordofan and El Fasher, basic care breaks down. Vaccination programs stall, chronic illnesses go untreated, and maternal and infant mortality soar. The WHO’s alarm over attacks on health care underscores that Sudan is on the brink of a full-scale health disaster, not just a war.
• Regional instability: Refugees have fled into neighboring Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, and beyond – countries that are themselves economically and politically fragile. A prolonged Sudan war risks becoming the core of a larger regional crisis stretching from the Red Sea to the Sahel.

Every month of inaction entrenches a war economy in which commanders profit from smuggling, looting, and cross-border deals, making a negotiated peace even harder and raising the long-term cost of reconstruction.

What Accountability Looks Like – and Why It’s Not Happening

Rep. Chris Smith’s description of “crimes against humanity” and calls for investigations align with growing documentation of atrocities, including sexual violence, ethnic cleansing patterns in Darfur, and deliberate starvation tactics. Yet accountability structures lag far behind the scale of alleged crimes.

Several mechanisms exist in theory but are hamstrung in practice:

• International Criminal Court (ICC): The ICC has an open Darfur file dating back to Bashir’s era, but has not yet become a central actor in the current conflict. Political reluctance, limited access, and competing crises have slowed progress.
• U.N. fact-finding and monitoring: Mandates can be created or expanded to document abuses, but these rely on Security Council politics and cooperation from states that may be aligned with one or both warring parties.
• Universal jurisdiction cases: Some European countries have prosecuted Syrian officials using universal jurisdiction; in theory, similar cases could be pursued against Sudanese commanders if survivors reach those jurisdictions. But this is piecemeal justice at best.

Meanwhile, both sides have learned from past conflicts that mass atrocities often go unpunished if they can be framed as “complex civil war,” especially when international attention is elsewhere. That perception of impunity is itself a driver of continued abuses.

What’s Being Missed in Mainstream Coverage

Most reporting, to the extent it happens, focuses understandably on battlefield developments and humanitarian statistics. But three deeper trends are often overlooked:

1. The privatization of war in Sudan: The RSF is not just a paramilitary; it is a business empire with stakes in gold mining, logistics, and cross-border trade, reportedly linked to networks reaching into the Gulf and beyond. This makes the conflict partly a struggle over economic fiefdoms – and suggests that any peace deal that ignores these financial structures will be fragile.
2. The death of the post-2011 “transition” model: Sudan was supposed to be one of the success stories of mass protest movements that toppled autocrats. The fact that it has instead produced one of the worst wars of the 21st century is a profound warning about half-hearted transitions that leave security sectors unreformed and economic power untouched.
3. The Red Sea and global trade angle: Sudan’s location along the Red Sea corridor, already destabilized by other regional conflicts, means that prolonged chaos could intersect with shipping, energy, and migration routes. The longer the world treats Sudan as a remote crisis, the more likely it becomes that its instability will eventually spill into global markets and security calculations.

Looking Ahead: What to Watch

Even amid the current catastrophe, several questions will determine Sudan’s future trajectory:

• Will external actors curb or fuel the war? Gulf states, Egypt, and others have leverage over both SAF and RSF through money, arms, and political cover. Quiet pressure to stop support – or overt backing for one side – could significantly alter the war’s course.
• Can civilians reclaim agency? Sudan’s protest movements and civil society were remarkably organized during the 2018–2019 uprising. Many of those networks still exist underground or in exile. Whether they can coalesce into a recognized political alternative will matter enormously for any sustainable peace.
• Will famine shock the world into action? Historically, images of mass starvation – not just war – have forced reluctant governments to respond, as in Ethiopia in the 1980s. If acute food insecurity in Sudan tips into recognizable famine, we may see a belated surge in attention, but at an enormous human cost.
• Documentation and justice: The degree to which evidence of war crimes can be safely collected now will shape accountability efforts years from today. Satellite imagery, survivor testimony in neighboring states, and digital forensics will be critical.

The Bottom Line

Sudan is not a peripheral conflict; it is a stress test of the entire post–Cold War humanitarian order. If a war that displaces 12 million people, threatens famine for nearly half a country’s population, and involves systematic atrocities can unfold with minimal international pressure, the implicit message is chilling: unless your war intersects with great-power rivalry or familiar geopolitical narratives, your suffering is negotiable.

What happens next in Sudan will be shaped not just by generals in Khartoum and RSF commanders in Darfur, but by the choices of distant governments, donors, and media outlets deciding each day whether Sudan is worth the bandwidth. For millions of displaced Sudanese, that choice is not abstract; it is the line between survival and oblivion.