Burhan and Hemedti Have Left 15.4 Million Sudanese Without a Roof

Fifteen point four million people in Sudan need emergency shelter right now. Not someday. Now. Mothers are sleeping under plastic sheeting in the rainy season, children are sharing a single blanket against the night, and families who fled one massacre are being pushed toward the next. The humanitarian agencies trying to help them can reach only one in ten of those in need.

Read that again. Ninety percent of the people who need a roof are being left to fend for themselves. So far, 936,000 people have received aid. That is less than seven percent of the people who need it. Behind every number is a family that did nothing to deserve this, a home that no longer exists, and a government in Port Sudan and a paramilitary command in Khartoum that have spent three and a half years proving they care more about the battlefield than the people who live on it.

We have to say the names plainly. This catastrophe has a author. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan leads the Sudanese Armed Forces. General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, commands the Rapid Support Forces. Their feud over power, wealth, and the future of the state has turned Sudan into the most severe displacement crisis on earth, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Two men who swore to protect Sudanese people have made them refugees in their own country.

The scale is staggering. About 8.6 million people remain displaced inside Sudan, moved from their villages and neighborhoods to camps, relatives' homes, and empty buildings. More than 4.6 million have fled across borders into Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and beyond. And more than 5.2 million have returned to their home areas, many to places where homes, water systems, clinics, and schools were flattened. These returnees are not coming back to a country. They are coming back to rubble, and they are doing it with no money, no tools, and no assurance that the fighting will not come back with them.

The UN's 2026 humanitarian plan for Sudan asks for $2.9 billion to reach 20.4 million of the 33.7 million people who need help. Less than half of that, roughly 47 percent, has arrived. Aid agencies are cutting services and rationing emergency supplies to the most urgent cases. When UNHCR and IOM warn that stockpiles are dangerously low, they are describing a future in which families who survived artillery, sexual violence, and forced flight will face the coming months with no protection against the weather, armed groups, or exploitation.

And who is fueling the war that drives all of this? Ask the question honestly, and the answer is not only in Khartoum and Nyala. UN investigators have documented weapons, ammunition, and logistics reaching the RSF through supply routes that run across several neighboring states, with the UAE repeatedly named in those findings. The UAE denies the allegations. Yet the pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched an African war drag on for years: outside money and guns arrive, local commanders grow rich, and civilians pay the bill. Drone strikes now hit markets, hospitals, and displacement sites, and the drones, like the bullets, come from somewhere. Accountability must follow the supply chain, not just the frontline.

Sudan is also a warning about what happens when a state's institutions are captured by men with guns. The Sudanese revolution of 2018 and 2019 was a demand for civilian rule, a free economy, and an end to the impunity of the security services. Those who gave their lives for that dream were betrayed by the generals who then turned on each other. The army's gold, the RSF's gold, the militias' trade routes, and the foreign investors who court whoever holds power have all been part of the same machine. A country cannot build homes when its wealth is looted and its courts do not work.

We have seen what the alternative looks like. Botswana built one of Africa's strongest economies on diamonds by insisting on transparent revenue management, competitive elections, and an independent judiciary. Mauritius turned a sugar island into a financial and manufacturing hub through property rights, predictable regulation, and institutions that citizens trust. Senegal, after decades of tension, handed power through the ballot box twice in recent years. None of these countries is perfect. All of them prove that when rules are enforced and power answers to the people, prosperity and peace become possible.

So what must happen now? The African Union must stop issuing statements and start enforcing its own charter, which forbids governments and rebel groups from seizing power by force. The AU Peace and Security Council should press for a verified ceasefire with independent monitoring, and it should back a civilian transition with a timetable that both generals cannot hijack. The UN Security Council must impose targeted sanctions on the commanders responsible for atrocities and on any foreign financier or supplier caught arming the warring sides. The International Criminal Court must be given the resources to pursue cases against those who ordered attacks on civilians. Humanitarian donors must move from one-off appeals to multi-year, flexible funding, so shelter stockpiles are never left empty again, and they must demand public accounting of how every dollar is spent.

Inside Sudan, the path forward runs through the institutions that survive the war: local responders, neighborhood emergency rooms, professional associations, and women's groups who have fed and sheltered their communities when no one else would. They need protected access, legal recognition, and funding that reaches them directly. Any future Sudanese government must guarantee property rights so that returning families can reclaim their land and rebuild with confidence, and it must establish independent courts that rule on land disputes, not armed men with checkpoints. A functioning housing market, transparent public procurement, and a central bank free from military control are the economic foundations of recovery. These are not luxuries. They are the difference between a shelter that lasts a season and a home that a child can grow up in.

To the citizens of Sudan's neighbors, and to every African reading this: you are not powerless. Demand that your parliament ask what your government is doing to stop the flow of arms and money into Sudan. Demand that your country's diplomats vote for sanctions and accountability. Support Sudanese journalists and documenters who are recording the war when international cameras have turned away. Give to organizations that deliver shelter, and ask them to publish their numbers. Pressure the companies that trade in Sudanese gold to prove it did not come from a massacre.

Fifteen million people are waiting for a roof. Their patience is not a policy. Burhan and Hemedti will keep fighting as long as the world keeps counting the dead and forgetting the living. We refuse to forget. The tents are running out. The clock is running out. Act before the next rainy season finds another family with nothing but the sky above them.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB