Sudan's Warring Generals Are Letting Children Starve and Die of Cholera

Somewhere in Sudan right now, a mother is carrying a child through the dust toward a clinic that may no longer exist. The child is dehydrated. The clinic has no drips, no staff, and no electricity. The road between them runs past checkpoints controlled by men with guns who have already decided that people like her do not matter.

This is what Sudan looks like after more than two years of war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. Two generals fighting for power have turned a nation into a graveyard, and the people paying the price are not the men giving the orders. They are nurses, farmers, schoolchildren, and grandmothers.

Let us be precise about what has happened, because precision is what separates a demand for justice from a shrug.

The war broke out in Khartoum on 15 April 2023, when the army under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary RSF under General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, turned their weapons on each other and on the capital's residents. Within months, millions had fled their homes. The United Nations has put the number of people displaced inside Sudan and across its borders in the range of twelve to fourteen million, one of the largest displacement crises on earth. Those are not statistics. They are families who left everything, many of them with nothing but the clothes they wore.

Health care was among the first casualties. The World Health Organization has repeatedly documented attacks on hospitals, ambulances, and medical personnel throughout the conflict. Hospitals in Khartoum and Darfur have been shelled, looted, or forced to close when staff were killed or fled. Doctors who stayed to treat the wounded have been targeted. When a health system is deliberately dismantled, the people it served do not vanish quietly. They suffer and die in plain sight.

Then came hunger. In August 2024, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system confirmed famine conditions in parts of Sudan, including the Zamzam displacement camp near El Fasher in North Darfur. Famine is not an accident of weather. It is the product of sieges, blocked roads, looted markets, and armed groups that treat food as a weapon. Children with swollen bellies and stick-thin limbs became the face of a war that the world kept describing in the language of "humanitarian crisis," as though no one had made a choice.

Someone made that choice. Cholera spread through displacement camps and crowded urban districts where clean water had become a memory. Sanitation collapsed when water systems were damaged and aid convoys were delayed or stopped. A disease that is entirely preventable with clean water and basic treatment became another killer, moving through communities already weakened by hunger and fear.

And the RSF has been accused by UN investigators and human rights organizations of mass atrocities in Darfur, including ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence against women and girls, and the destruction of entire villages. The army has also faced accusations of indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas. Both sides have blood on their hands. Anyone who tells you this is a clean fight between two equal evils is either lying or has never stood in front of a mass grave.

Why does this matter beyond Sudan's borders? Because Sudan is a test of whether the African Union and the international community mean what they say about civilian protection, sovereignty, and the rule of law. The AU's charter forbids unconstitutional seizures of power and commits member states to protecting human rights. Yet in Sudan, the AU has been largely absent, its statements reduced to hand-wringing while the killing continued.

Foreign powers have also made Sudan's war a marketplace. Reports from UN experts and investigative journalists have alleged that weapons and funds reached the RSF through networks linked to the United Arab Emirates, a claim Abu Dhabi has denied. Egypt, Turkey, Iran, and Russia have been linked to various forms of support for the army or to competing interests in Sudan's gold, ports, and strategic position on the Red Sea. Every one of these powers speaks the language of stability and partnership. Every one of them has a stake in who controls Sudan's resources. And every one of them, in its own way, is feeding a war whose victims are overwhelmingly African civilians. This is the new scramble for Africa, and the bill is being paid in children's lives.

We must also refuse the lazy idea that Sudanese people are incapable of governing themselves. Sudan has produced some of the most courageous civil society movements on the continent. The 2019 revolution that toppled Omar al-Bashir was driven by ordinary citizens demanding civilian rule, economic dignity, and accountability. Neighbourhood emergency response rooms, volunteer doctors, and local relief networks have kept people alive through this war when the state and the warring factions failed them. These are the building blocks of a functioning society, and they must be protected rather than crushed between two armies.

So what should happen? The answer is not complicated, though it requires courage.

The UN Security Council must enforce and expand the arms embargo on all parties to the conflict, and it must sanction every individual and company found to be supplying weapons or financing the fighting. Sanctions that exist only on paper are an insult to the dead. Humanitarian corridors must be opened and protected, with guaranteed access for WHO, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme, and any party that blocks aid must face consequences. Independent investigations into war crimes must proceed without interference, and the International Criminal Court must be supported in pursuing those responsible, whatever uniform they wear and whichever capital funds them.

The African Union must stop treating Sudan as someone else's problem. It should lead a credible civilian-led transition, with a clear timetable, and it should back the Sudanese civilians who have been fighting for democracy since 2019. Regional bodies like IGAD should coordinate on border access and refugee protection rather than leaving neighbouring countries like Chad and South Sudan to absorb the shock alone.

Africa has shown what a better path looks like. Botswana built one of the continent's most stable democracies on strong institutions, transparent public finance, and an independent judiciary. Mauritius proved that good governance and open markets can lift a nation from poverty into prosperity. Senegal has shown that peaceful transfers of power are possible even in hard times. None of these countries achieved stability by accident. They built it through rule of law, accountable leaders, and citizens who refused to accept less.

Sudan's people deserve the same. They deserve a ceasefire that is monitored and enforced, not one that is announced and then broken. They deserve a civilian government answerable to voters, a professional army under civilian control, and a justice system that prosecutes atrocities regardless of rank. They deserve an economy where a farmer can sell her harvest without a gunman taking it, and a doctor can treat a patient without fearing the next shell.

So here is what we demand. We demand that the Security Council stop debating and start enforcing. We demand that the AU name Sudan's war for what it is and stand with Sudan's civilian democrats. We demand that every government and company supplying weapons or money to either general be exposed and held accountable. And we demand that Sudanese voices, not foreign capitals, lead the path to peace.

To the generals in Khartoum and Darfur, we say this: history is keeping a record of who opened the roads and who closed them, who saved lives and who counted them. To the governments funding the guns, we say your mining contracts and port deals will not wash the blood from your hands. And to every African reading this, we say the silence is the weapon. Speak. Share. Pressure your representatives. Because the child in that dusty road is one of ours, and she is waiting for us to act.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB