In a year marked by global crises, the war in Sudan and Darfur has escalated to new and disturbing heights, drawing both regional and international scrutiny but, paradoxically, little sustained attention from the world’s major powers or media. As violence intensifies and the humanitarian crisis deepens, Sudan stands at the crossroads of justice, impunity, and survival.
For Wojciech Jagielski, a seasoned Poland-based war correspondent with over three decades of experience, Sudan’s agony is all too familiar. Having witnessed the Second Sudanese Civil War, the ongoing Darfur conflict, and the Eastern Sudan Insurgency, Jagielski’s perspective is steeped in both history and personal observation. “In terms of brutality, the conflict has not changed much; however, its scale has,” he told Genocide Watch. He recalled, “Over two million people have died during the South Sudan Independence War in the second half of the 20th century. During the first Darfur War, at the beginning of the 21st century, the number of casualties was estimated to be around 250,000. In the ongoing war, which began almost three years ago, tens of thousands of casualties have been reported, and more recently, the number has exceeded 100,000.”
This ongoing war, now approaching its third year as of October 2025, is no longer just a local tragedy. The brutality remains, but the context has shifted. What was once a campaign by Khartoum to subdue Darfur has transformed into a power struggle for control of the country itself, with Arab militias from Darfur rebelling against their historical overlords in the capital. “Today’s war is more about who will rule in Khartoum, while the previous conflict aimed to stifle the rebellion in Darfur,” Jagielski explained.
The international response, once robust, has faded dramatically. In the early 2000s, the world’s gaze was fixed on Darfur. The International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted then-President Omar al-Bashir, and celebrities and politicians alike spoke out. “Today, nobody cares about Darfur and Sudan aside from their neighbors and humanitarian aid organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières,” Jagielski lamented. “The Western world and its media are exclusively preoccupied with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.”
Yet, October 2025 brought a rare measure of accountability. The ICC issued its first conviction related to the Darfur genocide, finding Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed in 2003. This landmark ruling also marked the ICC’s first conviction for gender-based persecution. According to Mada Masr, a survivor of Kushayb’s attacks expressed hope “for justice for all the victims of violence in Darfur, then and now.” Mohamed Salah, a lawyer with Emergency Lawyers, noted the case’s significance as the first ICC conviction resulting from a UN Security Council referral, underscoring the effectiveness of such mechanisms.
However, justice remains elusive for many. The ICC’s ruling comes as the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) voted to extend the mandate of its independent fact-finding mission on Sudan for just one more year, despite calls from over 96 civil society organizations for a longer term. The mission’s reports have found both the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese military responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including indiscriminate attacks, torture, sexual violence, looting, and ethnically targeted killings. Sudan’s own National Commission of Investigation, meanwhile, investigates only RSF abuses, raising concerns about its independence.
As the fighting rages, the nature of the violence continues to evolve. In a deeply troubling development, both sides are now accused of using chemical weapons. Civilian, medical, and military sources in Fasher reported to Mada Masr that RSF drones dropped cylinders releasing unidentified gases, causing respiratory problems and convulsions. France 24’s investigative unit found evidence that the military used chlorine in two incidents in 2024. “We suspected that the RSF fired missiles carrying gas,” one resident told Mada Masr. These attacks mark, as one military source put it, “a new level in the RSF’s crimes against civilians.”
Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation has deteriorated sharply. Sudan is facing a deepening food crisis, compounded by devastating floods in late September. Farmers have described their farmlands and crops as “wiped out,” with agriculture “barely surviving the war,” Mada Masr reported. In Sennar State, banana, lemon, and mango crops were destroyed. In Gezira, the world’s largest irrigation project has suffered more than 95 percent damage, according to project director Ibrahim Mustafa. Agricultural exports have nearly ceased, food prices have soared by over 400 percent in some regions, and catastrophic levels of acute hunger have been recorded in displacement camps.
The government, for its part, has downplayed the crisis. Prime Minister Kamel Idris insisted, “Sudan has definitively moved beyond the stage of talking about famine,” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He placed responsibility for besieged areas, such as the city of Fasher, on the international community, urging them to “shoulder their humanitarian responsibilities and work to lift this siege immediately.”
Neighboring countries are far from passive observers. The war’s ripple effects have drawn in South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Libya, and the Central African Republic, each with their own stakes and alliances. South Sudan’s oil exports depend on cooperation with both Khartoum and Darfur, making it vulnerable to shifting allegiances and violence. Chad, ruled by the Deby family of the Zaghawa community, is balancing internal ethnic politics with external alliances, notably with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which supports Darfuri Arabs in exchange for access to gold mines. The UAE, in turn, uses Chad and eastern Libya as supply routes for weapons, with Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group—now rebranded as Africa Corp—playing a key role. Ethiopia and the Central African Republic are also entangled, their involvement shaped by regional rivalries and debts owed to foreign powers.
Against this backdrop, journalists face daunting obstacles. Jagielski described the logistical nightmare of reporting from Sudan: “Sudan is an enormous country; it was the biggest African country before the division into South and North in 2011. It is almost completely devoid of roads, especially in the underdeveloped desert of Darfur. Getting the news that something important is happening and getting there, particularly in Darfur, is an incredibly difficult task.” The decline of traditional media and the reluctance of digital outlets to cover Sudan unless something truly shocking happens have further eroded international awareness.
Despite these challenges, Jagielski remains committed to his role. “I never doubted that, but I also never believed that it was a journalist’s role to change the world. I believed that a journalist’s task is to inform the world about all of the most important events from all aspects of life... If we do our job correctly, nobody will be able to say that they did not know what was happening.” Yet, he acknowledged the pain of returning to refugee camps and seeing the disappointment in the eyes of victims who had hoped that telling their stories would bring change.
The war in Sudan and Darfur is a complex tapestry of power struggles, ethnic conflict, regional intrigue, and international neglect. While the ICC’s conviction of Ali Kushayb offers a glimmer of justice, the broader picture remains grim. With both the RSF and the military implicated in war crimes, chemical weapons allegations mounting, and millions facing hunger and displacement, Sudan’s crisis demands attention—not just from its neighbors and aid organizations, but from a world that can no longer afford to look away.
Sudan’s future, and the fate of its people, now hang in the balance as the world watches—if it is watching at all.