Sudan: 30 million in need of humanitarian assistance

The UN has found that more than 30 million people require urgent humanitarian assistance in Sudan as of October 23rd, according to a report by the Middle East Monitor, via Anadolu Agency, on the same day.

In a joint statement, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), UNICEF, and the World Food Program (WFP) said that “Sudan is facing one of the world’s most severe emergencies, with more than 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, including over 9.6 million internally displaced people and nearly 15 million children.”

The civil war, which broke out in April 2023, has killed at least 24,000 people, while 13 million have been displaced. The conflict is between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary, UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The Western Darfur region is one of Sudan’s most severely affected areas, particularly in the North Darfur state capital of El Fasher. An RSF-imposed siege has essentially locked residents into what Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) has described as a “literal kill box”, as walls have been constructed around the city.

Ugochi Daniels, Deputy Director General for Operations at the IOM, stated that the population of El-Fasher had decreased by 62% in 2025. The RSF has blocked access to humanitarian corridors leading to El-Fasher, forcing community kitchens to close as food supplies run out.

Since famine was identified in 2024, the number of children suffering from malnutrition has doubled in North Darfur.

Refugee camps sheltering displaced residents have been targeted by artillery fire and drone strikes, forcing inhabitants to flee to increasingly isolated areas where food, water and medical care are scarce.

The UN condemned the “repeated and deliberate” attacks on civilians after the RSF allegedly carried out drone strikes between October 10th and 11th, which killed at least 110 people. The strikes appeared to target a shelter for displaced persons and the city’s last major hospital.

A drone strike on a mosque inside the Abu-Shouk camp killed at least 75 people on September 19th, as displacement camps have often become the targets of large-scale assaults.

On June 23rd, a UN official warned there was a “very high” risk of genocide occurring in Sudan, as the RSF have been accused of committing ethnically-motivated attacks.

Darfur was previously the site of a genocide between August 2003 and March 2004, when the Janjaweed militias targeted ethnic Africans who staged an uprising against the oppressive Arab Sudanese government. Janjaweed translates to “devils on horseback”, and the group inflicted atrocities against villagers on behalf of the government that conducted raids and aerial bombings.

The state-sanctioned violence killed an estimated 300,000 people and displaced a further 2.7 million.

Middle East Monitor via Anadolu Agency, Maghrebi.org