Jennifer Holleis

Despite ongoing fighting and horrific human rights violations, global attention on the world’s worst humanitarian and displacement crises remains low. The situation in Kordofan is worsening.

The ongoing war in Sudan is the most neglected global crisis in 2025, a survey among 22 global aid organizations concluded this week. The war-torn country also ranked first in “The top 10 crises the world can’t ignore in 2026” by the International Rescue Committee.

Throughout 2025, the situation in the African country has continued to deteriorate since the war began in April 2023. At the time, the generals of the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, fell out over the integration of the paramilitary forces into the national army. Since then, oil- and gold-rich Sudan, with its vast agricultural lands, has turned into what the UN and other aid organizations call the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement crises.

According to the UN, some 14 million people remain displaced within Sudan and in neighboring countries.

The estimated death tally ranges between 40,000 and 250,000 people. More accurate or updated figures remain out of reach as fighting continues, satellite-based internet communication is curbed, and many aid organizations and observers have left the country.

“The Sudan crisis should be front page news every single day,” Save the Children humanitarian director Abdurahman Sharif said in a statement. 

New hotspot: Kordofan

Fighting between the RSF and SAF meanwhile is concentrated on the region of Kordofan, where the Sudanese army holds control of several cities that are surrounded by the paramilitary RSF.

Kordofan is also the last region that separates army-held territories in the north and the center, including Sudan’s capital Khartoum, and RSF-controlled areas in Sudan’s western Darfur region and parts of the south.

“Most recently, violence in Kordofan has escalated dramatically,” Jan Sebastian Friedrich-Rust, executive director of the German section of the NGO Action against Hunger, confirms.

“The siege of communities in Dilling and Kadugli [in South Kordofan] is blocking access to vital humanitarian aid,” he told DW, explaining that people have nothing left to eat and there is no access to medicine.

“Famine has been already declared in [Darfur’s] el-Fasher and Kadugli, and 20 other locations in Darfur and Kordofan are at acute risk of famine by January 2026,” he said.

The dire situation is also reflected in the latest Sudan update by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). As of mid-December, the IPC estimated that 21.2 million people — nearly half of Sudan’s population — face acute food insecurity.

This number is likely to increase given that the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) announced last Friday that from January onwards, it needs to reduce rations in Sudan to “the absolute minimum for survival” due to a lack of funding.

“If the world does not urgently step up, diplomatically, financially, and morally, an already catastrophic situation will deteriorate further with millions of Sudanese and their neighbours paying the price,” Mamadou Dian Balde, the UN Refugee Agency’s Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, warned in a statement this week.

Civilians ‘at the heart of warfare’

Action Against Hunger’s Friedrich-Rust also worries that Kordofan is about to turn into a second el-Fasher, where the RSF committed mass atrocities during their takeover in November.

Meanwhile, Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which uses satellite imagery to monitor atrocities, warned in a new report that the RSF militia “destroyed and concealed evidence of its widespread mass killings.”

Of the 150 clusters of objects consistent with human remains the HRL had initially identified, nearly 60 are no longer visible. Instead, eight earth disturbances appeared near the sites of mass killing, the HRL said.

“The reality is that both parties to the conflict and their allies haven’t just failed to protect civilians, but the targeting of civilians is at the heart of their warfare,” Philippe Dam, Human Rights Watch’s EU Director for Advocacy, told DW.

“Although the majority of sexual violence, attacks on hospitals, aid workers, and the use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas pertain to the responsibility of the RSF, also the SAF commits massive violations against civilians,” he said.

For example, the SAF have stepped up mass detentions against those suspected of having collaborated or supported the RSF, Dam told DW on Thursday.

These detentions appear to be extremely arbitrary as those targeted also include humanitarian workers, he warned.

“We have also received reports of numerous deaths in SAF-run prisons and we see the re-emergence of death penalty sentences,” Dam said, raising alarm. 

In his view, it is high time for the EU to step up its actions, to take robust measures and address the crimes which are continuing to be committed by both sides.

“I find it shocking that the RSF leader General Mohammed Dagalo, popularly known as Hemedti, has not yet been sanctioned by the EU despite the clear links between his responsibility and the crimes committed that we and others could identify,” Dam said.

He also appealed on the EU to address the backers of the conflict. While the SAF is mainly backed by Egypt, the RSF is allegedly supported by the United Arab Emirates, even though Abu Dhabi denies any involvement.

EU help not enough

In December, the EU started airlifting 100 tons of humanitarian aid to the Sudanese region of Darfur. The air bridge will end in January 2026 and costs €3.5 million ($4.1 million), which is funded by the EU’s humanitarian budget, the commission said.

Action Against Hunger’s Jan Sebastian Friedrich-Rust welcomes the initiative, but warned that this was no more than a drop in the ocean.

He said that the end of USAID, and cuts in foreign aid by European countries, including Germany, have forced life-saving programs, like local soup kitchens, to close.

“The need for aid is enormous, but so far only 35% of the financial resources required for humanitarian aid have been made available,” he told DW.

Edited by Ben Knight

© DW