Donors pledge €1.3 billion as Sudan war enters third year

Three years into Sudan’s devastating war, international donors meeting in Berlin pledged about €1.3 billion in a bid to ease a crisis that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.

“This nightmare must end,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, describing the anniversary as “a tragic milestone in a conflict that has shattered a country of immense promise”.

“The consequences are not confined to Sudan. They are destabilising the wider region,” he told the conference in a video address.

Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, warned that Sudan’s suffering has unfolded largely out of public view, calling it “the world’s greatest man-made humanitarian catastrophe” and announcing that Germany would provide €230 million in aid.

Alongside efforts to secure more funding, organisers said the Berlin conference was intended to help breathe life back into stalled peace initiatives, though neither of the war’s main combatants – the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – was invited.

Sudan’s government in Khartoum denounced the Berlin gathering as an “unacceptable” intrusion into its domestic affairs, saying Germany had not consulted Sudan before hosting the meeting.

The conflict has pushed most Sudanese deeper into poverty, triggered repeated allegations of war crimes and uprooted millions who are now living with hunger and instability.

“People are exhausted,” said Amgad Ahmed, 42, speaking from Omdurman, the city across the Nile from Khartoum.

“Three years of war have worn people down. We have lost work, savings and any sense of stability.”

Lethal drone strikes

The Berlin conference brought together governments, aid organisations and civil society representatives, following earlier meetings in London and Paris over the previous two years.

The war between Sudan’s military and the RSF has left tens of thousands dead.

Since January alone, nearly 700 civilians have been killed in drone strikes, according to the United Nations, which says attacks by both sides have intensified, especially in South Kordofan and Blue Nile State.

Yet in the capital, a fragile sense of normal life has started to re-emerge since the army recaptured Khartoum last year.

Some neighbourhoods are already seeing rebuilding work. Markets are trading again, traffic has returned to roads that were once deserted, and national secondary school exams took place this week after nearly two years of widespread closures.

The UN says about 1.8 million people have gone back to Khartoum.

But the threat has not disappeared. Authorities are still trying to remove tens of thousands of unexploded bombs scattered among the city’s fire-scorched buildings.

Al-Basheer Babker al-Basheer, 41, who returned to Khartoum twice this year after being away for three years, said recovery would be slow.

“I was happy to come back,” he told AFP. “But when I went into the city centre, it was heartbreaking.

“The road to the university where I studied is no longer the same. The walls are black. They are not the same places we used to go to.”

Donors pledged about €1.3 billion for Sudan at an international meeting held in Berlin

Stalled diplomacy

Peace efforts backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – a group known as the Quad – have so far produced no breakthrough.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey support the Sudanese army, while the UAE has been accused of supplying arms to the RSF. Each side denies direct involvement.

Those Quad-led talks lost momentum after army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said in November that the group was biased because Abu Dhabi was included.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk told the Berlin gathering he was “alarmed by the sharp increase in the use of drone warfare in recent months” during the conflict.

“Drone strikes were responsible for three-quarters of the civilian deaths we documented in the first three months of this year,” he said.

Mr Turk said most of the drones being used were not made in Sudan, adding that “external powers are providing advanced weapon systems and finance while promoting their own agenda”.

UN officials lament an ‘abandoned crisis’

Sudan is now widely seen as the world’s biggest humanitarian emergency, particularly in terms of hunger and displacement. The conflict has forced 13 million people from their homes.

Earlier, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said: “This grim and chastening anniversary marks another year when the world has failed to meet the test of Sudan.”

At least 59,000 people have been killed. The UN says at least 6,000 died over three days in October when the RSF rampaged through the Darfur outpost of el-Fasher, and UN-backed experts said the assault carried “the defining characteristics of genocide”.

More than 11,000 people have gone missing during the war, according to the Red Cross.

Famine has taken hold in parts of Sudan. In February, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the world’s leading authority on food insecurity, said the number of people suffering from severe acute malnutrition – the deadliest form – was expected to rise to 800,000.

A Sudanese water vendor fills the tank of a donkey-drawn cart at the water station in Port Sudan

About 34 million people – nearly two in every three Sudanese – require aid, the UN says. The World Health Organization (WHO) says only 63% of health facilities are fully or partly functioning as the country battles disease outbreaks including cholera.

Fuel prices in Sudan have now risen by more than 24% because of the Iran war and the disruption it has caused to shipping, adding further pressure to food costs.

A petrol attendant fills a car’s tank at a petrol station in Omdurmanamid amid the fuel crisis

“A plea from me: Please don’t call this the forgotten crisis. I’m referring to this as an abandoned crisis,” said Denise Brown, the UN’s most senior official in Sudan, as she criticised the international community for failing to prioritise an end to the war.

The conflict erupted from a power struggle that surfaced during Sudan’s transition toward democracy after a popular uprising led to the military removal of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Chairperson of the African Union Commission Mahmoud Ali Youssouf at the conference in Berlin

The rupture widened between military leader Mr Burhan, head of the ruling sovereign council, and RSF commander Genernal Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who had served as his deputy.

Neither camp is capable of securing a decisive win, said Shamel Elnoor, a Sudanese journalist and researcher, adding that the Sudanese people “have become powerless and are subjected to foreign dictates”.

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Additional reporting: PA