Sudan's Warring Generals Are Starving Millions While Donors Look Away

Aid warehouses in Sudan are empty. Let that sink in. In a country where 15.4 million people urgently need shelter, the trucks have stopped because the money has stopped. Sixteen trucks reached Darfur in the last days before the stocks ran out, and that was the last of them.

Who do we blame for this? Not the weather, though El Niño has cut rainfall across Sudan and left harvests in Darfur and Kordofan withered. Not the donors alone, though they have given less than half of what was asked. We blame the two men who started this war in April 2023 and have kept it burning for three years: General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who leads the Sudanese Armed Forces, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who commands the Rapid Support Forces. These were allies once. They shared power after the 2019 uprising that toppled Omar al-Bashir. Then they turned their guns on each other, and on the people they were supposed to protect.

The numbers the UN agencies released tell the story plainly. The UN refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration say humanitarian groups can reach only about one in ten of the people who need help. Three in four displaced Sudanese are women and children. More than 5.2 million people have gone back to their areas of origin, but many cannot return to homes that have been destroyed or looted, and health care, electricity, and water are largely absent in many places. Sudan's 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan asks for $2.9 billion. It has received 47 percent of that.

Think about what that means in a real household. A woman who fled a shelling in Darfur has no tent. She sleeps in the open, surrounded by strangers, with no lock on her door and no privacy when she needs the latrine at night. A mother cannot cook for her children without fearing for her body. A family has to choose between buying food at painfully high prices and buying a blanket for the winter. Every Sudanese pound spent on bread is a pound not spent on keeping a child warm. This is what the war has reduced a nation to: arithmetic that ends in death.

The displacement is not staying inside Sudan's borders. Sudanese now make up the largest nationality arriving in Europe through the Eastern Mediterranean route. Those who drown in the sea and those who make it to Europe's camps are the human residue of a war that the world treats as a distant tragedy. When the aid plan is starved, neighbouring countries like Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia absorb the shock, and Europe eventually absorbs the rest. There is no such thing as a Sudanese crisis that stays in Sudan.

We have heard this story before, and that is what should make us angry. Darfur burned in the early 2000s, and the Janjaweed militias that terrorised its villages later evolved into the RSF. The world wrung its hands, the International Criminal Court opened its Darfur file, and the men accused were left to rule for decades. Impunity is not an accident in Sudan. It is the foundation on which both generals built their careers. Meanwhile, Sudan's gold flows out through informal channels, and the UN Panel of Experts has documented weapons and financing reaching the parties from abroad. The UAE has been named in such reporting as a source of support for the RSF, a claim Abu Dhabi denies. Egypt, Turkey, Russia, and others have also been drawn in through arms, politics, and business. Every outside power that trades guns and gold for influence in Sudan is feeding this war, and every one of them claims to care about stability. Ask the mothers in Darfur whether they feel stable.

So what must change? Start with the guns. The UN Security Council must enforce the arms embargo on Darfur and extend it to the whole country with real monitoring, not communiqués. Sanctions must reach the financiers, the gold smugglers, and the foreign suppliers, not just the foot soldiers. Any country that arms either side should face a clear choice between its business in Sudan and its seat at the table.

Second, the humanitarian lifeline must be made permanent. The African Union and IGAD should press both armies to open and keep open cross-border corridors and guarantee safe passage for convoys. Aid must be funded flexibly, so that agencies can buy blankets, solar lamps, and water pumps where they are needed, rather than waiting for donor paperwork while people freeze. Sudanese local networks, including the community-run Emergency Response Rooms that kept neighbourhoods fed and treated the wounded when the state collapsed, deserve direct funding and protection. Civil society that answers to its own people is the strongest foundation any Sudan will have.

Third, accountability cannot be a footnote. Both generals and every commander who has ordered attacks on civilians must face prosecution. The ICC's Darfur mandate must be fully used. Sudan's courts must be rebuilt on independence, not loyalty. A country that cannot punish its warlords will keep producing them.

Africa has proof that a better path exists. Botswana built one of the continent's most successful economies on diamonds by insisting on transparent revenue management and strong institutions. Mauritius has grown into a stable, prosperous democracy by protecting property rights and rule of law. Senegal showed in 2024 that a peaceful transfer of power, under a constitution that the people defended, can reset a nation's future. Sudan's people have shown the same courage. They marched for civilian rule for years and paid for it with their lives. Their demand was simple: a state that answers to its citizens, not to armed men with foreign friends.

So here is what we demand, as Africans who refuse to watch in silence. We demand that the AU stop issuing statements and start enforcing its own principles of non-indifference to atrocities. We demand that the UN Security Council stop treating Sudan as a file and start treating it as a people. We demand that the donors who pledged to help fund the plan pay what they promised, in full, this winter. We demand that the UAE, Egypt, Turkey, Russia, and every other external power stop trading in Sudan's suffering and start answering for their part in it. And we demand that Burhan and Hemedti stop, lay down their weapons, and let the trucks through.

How many more winters will Sudanese families spend without a blanket before we decide this is unacceptable? How many more warehouses must sit empty before the people who could fill them finally act? The answer is not complicated. Fund the aid. Enforce the embargo. Prosecute the killers. Put the guns down. Sudan's children are waiting for us to decide that their lives matter as much as our own.

Based on reporting by UN-NEWS