(Novemeber 20, 2025)
Trump admitted that the devastating war between Sudan‘s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was „not on my charts“ before Prince Mohammed bin Salman pushed him to get involved.
But Trump said he would now work to „stabilise“ the conflict with regional powers, notably including the United Arab Emirates, which denies accusations of backing the RSF with weapons and mercenaries.
Israeli and Emirati online networks have worked in tandem to shape narratives around Sudan and Gaza, targeting Sudan’s army even as RSF massacres mounted in El Fasher.
On the defence-industrial side, firms are expanding inside the UAE, tightening a two-way flow of money, tech, and intelligence. Israeli defence firm Controp is opening a UAE subsidiary making it the latest emblem of this deepening security embrace.
All the while, Emirati rulers boast of their „development model“ as a „shining example for the region“: authoritarian, anti-political, drenched in consumerism and spectacle.
It is a façade of progress built on repression. A mirage of modernity concealing a machinery of tyranny.
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• For the current period of analysis (September 2025), and for the first projection period (October 2025 to January 2026), the Famine Review Committee (FRC) concluded that the classification of the towns of El Fasher and Kadugli in IPC Phase 5 (Famine, with reasonable evidence) is plausible. In the besieged town of Dilling, although the situation might be similar to that of Kadugli besieged town, the FRC was unable to determine whether a Famine (IPC Phase 5) classification is plausible due to extremely limited data availability.
• Uncertainty around the evolution of the conflict in the coming weeks and months raises a risk of Famine in areas surrounding the three towns, including Tawila, Melit and At Tawisha localities and the Western Nuba Mountains.
• Famine and the risk of Famine are urgent priorities, but they are only the most severe symptoms of a far broader and deepening crisis affecting millions across Sudan.
• This is a man-made emergency, and all steps needed to prevent further catastrophe are clear. Exert maximum diplomatic pressure on the parties to the conflict and their international supporters for a ceasefire and an end to the blockades —and ultimately an end to the conflict itself. Full humanitarian and commercial access should be enabled and local aid efforts strengthened.
• Given the scale of the crisis and the limited resources, humanitarian aid can only prevent famine temporarily and in limited locations unless these wider causes are addressed.
Famine has spread to two new regions in Sudan, including a major city in the Darfur region where a militia has reportedly carried out mass killings and sent tens of thousands fleeing in the last week.
El Fasher in western Darfur, and Kadugli in South Kordofan province, are now officially suffering from famine, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirmed on Monday. Twenty other areas in the regions of Kordofan and Darfur are also at risk, the international body added.
Famine has spread to two regions of war-torn Sudan, including a major city in Darfur where paramilitary fighters have been rampaging, a global hunger monitoring group said Monday, as the war has created the world‘s largest humanitarian disaster.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the leading international authority on hunger crises, said famine has been detected in el-Fasher in Darfur and Kadugli town in South Kordofan province. Twenty other areas in Darfur and Kordofan, where fighting has intensified in recent months, are also at risk of famine, according to the IPC.
The memories of what happened in el-Fasher were difficult for her to put into words.
“The dead bodies were everywhere – in the streets, inside houses and at the gates of many houses,” Yahya told Al Jazeera. “Wherever you are in el-Fasher, you will see dead bodies scattered.”
Her testimony is one of several accounts from people who fled North Darfur’s capital after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s regular army, captured the city on October 26.
In Gaza, we are used to waking up to the sounds of explosions, counting the days between meals, and cycling constantly between fear and hope. We thought our pain was unlike any other in the world until we saw Sudan burning under the same silence. There, as here, people die from hunger and under rubble, cameras and lenses absent, as if pain in the Global South is not meant to be heard in the North.
In Sudan and Gaza, children are snatched from their mothers’ arms before they even know what safety feels like. Last Tuesday alone, some 460 people were reportedly killed by paramilitary forces in the city of El-Fasher. Estimates put the rate of displacement in Gaza at 90%; in Sudan, more than 14 million people have been displaced. Homes are destroyed, access to clean water is severely limited, food remains deeply scarce, and the wounded lie scattered on the ground without medical care, just as we witnessed in our small city on the Mediterranean coast.
Yet what hurts more than bombing or hunger is silence.
(November 2, 2025)
Days after Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, in a violent assault that included the killing of more than 400 people at a hospital, aid groups warn that tens of thousands of civilians are at risk amid continuing violence, including some that may be trapped in el-Fasher and others harmed while fleeing.
(Novemebr 2, 2025)
A total of 70,894 people have been displaced since the RSF took control, it said.
However, less than 6,000 have made it to the nearest camp in Tawila, 65 kilometers (40 miles) away, said Shashwat Saraf, Sudan director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs the camp.
Almost 1,000 people arrived in the last three days, he said.
“The numbers are still very few. We are not seeing the hundreds of thousands that we were expecting. If people are still in el-Fasher, it will be very difficult for them to survive,” he told The Associated Press by phone from Tawila.
“What is unfolding in El Fasher recalls the horrors Darfur was subjected to twenty years ago,” Mr. Fletcher said, referring to the atrocities of the early 2000s that shocked the world and eventually led to International Criminal Court indictments.
“But somehow today we are seeing a very different global reaction – one of resignation,” he continued. “This is also a crisis of apathy.”
“The Sudan crisis is, at its core, a failure of protection, and our responsibility to uphold international law,” Mr. Fletcher said. “Atrocities are committed with unashamed expectation of impunity…the world has failed an entire generation.”
(October 30, 2025)
The United States condemns in the strongest terms the horrific violence occurring in El Fasher. The situation is both tragic and appalling.
We have said this before, and we will say it again – the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias have committed genocide.
The RSF has and continues to systematically kill men and boys – even infants – and deliberately target women and children for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. These crimes are ethnically motivated.
RSF militias are targeting civilians as they flee, killing innocent people escaping conflict, and preventing those who remain from accessing life-saving supplies.
The United States condemns these abhorrent atrocities in no uncertain terms. Those responsible should be held accountable, including through sanctions, as noted by the Sudan Sanctions Panel of Experts in its most recent report.
(…)
Colleagues, ending wars is a priority for President Trump, and the United States remains committed to working with our partners and other stakeholders to resolve the crisis.
Together, we are focused on securing an immediate humanitarian truce, halting external support, and advancing a transition to civilian governance.
(October 28, 2025)
British military equipment has been found on battlefields in Sudan, used by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group accused of genocide, according to documents seen by the UN security council.
(…)
Months after the UN security council first received material alleging that the UAE may have supplied British-made items to the RSF, new data indicates that the British government went on to approve further exports to the Gulf state for military equipment of the same type.
British engines made specifically for a type of UAE-manufactured armoured personnel carrier also appear to have been exported to the Emirates, despite evidence that the vehicles had been used in Libya and Yemen in defiance of UN arms embargos.
“They’re frequent and the logistics are transferred immediately to another aircraft that is on standby and is destined for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan through the neighbouring countries,” said Abdullahi, a senior Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) commander at Bosaso Airport, who spoke to Middle East Eye using a different name for security reasons.
According to flight tracking data, satellite imagery, multiple local sources, and US and regional diplomats, the origin of these planes and their cargo is clear: the United Arab Emirates.
(…)
As MEE reported recently, Bosaso is connected to a ring of bases built and expanded by the UAE across the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea. The bases, on the islands of Mayun, Abd al-Kuri, Samhah; at the Somaliland port of Berbera and the Yemeni port of Mocha, are all on territory nominally controlled not by the UAE but its allies or clients.
Since the powerful paramilitary group made a major incursion into the city last week, the UN human rights office has received “horrendous accounts of summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks against humanitarian workers, looting, abductions and forced displacement,” said Seif Magango, spokesperson for the UN human rights office (OHCHR).
Speaking from Nairobi to journalists in Geneva, Mr. Magango said numerous testimonies had been received from residents who had fled in terror as the city fell, then “survived the threatening journey to Tawila, approximately 70 kilometres away” – a journey that takes three to four days on foot.
(October 28, 2025)
Middle East Eye has reviewed dozens of video clips and images allegedly taken in el-Fasher since the RSF assault began.
Some were published by the RSF itself; others emerged on social media, particularly Sudanese Telegram groups.
The footage depicts chaotic and bloody scenes, captured by triumphant RSF fighters. Investigations suggest the videos are new.
The Arabic dialect spoken is Sudanese – particularly Darfuri – and the fighters’ dress is consistent with members of the RSF.
(October 28, 2025)
Horrific stories of mass-atrocities committed by the RSF militia continue to emerge, along with the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled the North Darfur city of El Fasher in Sudan.
The agency has received reports of summary executions of civilians trying to escape what was the last Sudanese military government stronghold of El Fasher – with indications of ethnic motivations for killings – and of former combatants who have put down their weapons, which is prohibited under humanitarian law.
“The risk of further large-scale, ethnically motivated violations and atrocities in El Fasher is mounting by the day,” warned UN human rights chief Volker Türk.
“Urgent and concrete action needs to be taken to ensure the protection of civilians in El Fasher and safe passage for those trying to reach relative safety.”
Das sudanesische Ärztenetzwerk teilte mit, RSF-Kämpfer hätten nach ihrem Einmarsch in Al-Faschir am Sonntag Dutzende Zivilisten getötet und Krankenhäuser und andere Gesundheitseinrichtungen geplündert.
Das Darfur-Netzwerk für Menschenrechte berichtete von mehr als 1.000 teilweise willkürlichen Festnahmen.
However, sources told Middle East Eye that the UAE, which is the RSF’s most significant patron, refused to address the situation in el-Fasher, which has been under siege for over 500 days.
The Rapid Support Forces claimed to have captured the city on Sunday, the last state capital in Darfur yet to fall to the paramilitaries.
Diplomats told Middle East Eye that representatives of Burhan’s government and its enemy, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), were both in Washington for indirect talks.
According to an Egyptian presidential source, US President Donald Trump has personally tasked Sisi to work on ending Sudan’s civil war.
(October 20, 2025)
US President Donald Trump’s senior envoy for Arab and African affairs said peace negotiations in Libya and the Democratic Republic of Congo were progressing, and his team was working hard to pursue a ceasefire in Sudan.
“We think it’s achievable,” Massad Boulos said in an interview in Rome of a deal in Libya, which has been mired in chaos since the ouster of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. “You can’t expect a peace process to be implemented overnight,” he added. “I hope that this process moves fast.”
The meeting was convened at the invitation of the United States. The ministers have engaged in extensive consultations on the conflict in Sudan, recalling that it has provoked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and poses grave risks to regional peace and security.
The ministers committed to the shared set of principles with regard to ending the conflict in Sudan:
The conflicting parties of Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia have committed war crimes and atrocities since mid-April 2023. On September 9, 2025, the UN Human Right Council submitted a report documenting that dozens of detainees have reportedly killed due to torture and the systematic deprivation of food and medical treatment since June.
It has been estimated that the war claimed the lives of 150,000 people by June 2024. As of July 2025, 12 million people had been forced to flee their homes, including 7.7 million internally displaced persons (IDPs)—more than half of whom are children, said Migration Policy Institute on July 17, 2025.
Here is the full text of the joint statement:
Since 11 August, the UN has documented the killing of at least 125 civilians in the El Fasher area, including summary executions – although the actual number is likely to be higher.
“The Secretary-General is alarmed at the grave risks of serious violations of international humanitarian law as well as violations and abuses of international human rights law, including ethnically motivated ones,” said Mr. Dujarric.
Meanwhile, supplies are pre-positioned near El Fasher, but the UN and partners continue to face obstacles in moving them into the city.
Some 70 trucks of humanitarian assistance are currently waiting in Nyala, South Darfur, a top official with the UN aid coordination office OCHA said on Thursday in New York.
Mr. Dujarric also noted that repeated attacks on humanitarian personnel and assets in North Darfur have occurred over recent months.
(today)
He said 260,000 civilians remain trapped in the city, facing hunger and disease, with 130,000 children suffering from malnutrition. Al-Amin accused RSF fighters of raping 23 children and killing 1,000 others, whose bodies he said were mutilated.
The RSF has also destroyed six schools and 35 hospitals, according to Al-Amin. He called on the international community to work together to deliver humanitarian aid.
The government’s Humanitarian Aid Commissioner, Salwa Adam Binnia, called for the enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 2736, which demanded the RSF halt the siege. She said government relief has been blocked from reaching the city.
(April 10, 2025)
Sudan has told the United Nations’ top court that the United Arab Emirates is breaching the genocide convention by arming and funding the rebel paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces
More than a million people in Sudan’s el-Fasher are pleading for protection after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) advanced on the city, killing hundreds of people while on its way.
Multiple sources in and around el-Fasher told Middle East Eye that the RSF is preparing to invade the city, which is the capital of North Darfur state and the only place in western Sudan still held by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its allies.
The latest attacks, which began on 11 April, saw Rapid Support Forces (RSF)-affiliated forces launch coordinated assaults on Zamzam and Abu Shouk – two of the largest camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Darfur – as well as the regional capital, El Fasher.
Among those killed were 23 children as well as nine humanitarian workers who were operating one of the last remaining health posts.
(January 14, 2025)
Sudan’s ruinous civil war is approaching its third year, leaving a legacy of malnutrition, massive population displacement and chronic insecurity. As the UN system prepares to launch a call for record funding of $4.2 billion to support aid operations in the country, here are some of the main things to know about what has been described as the largest and most devasting displacement, humanitarian and protection crisis in the world today.
(…)
Over 18,800 civilians have been reported killed since the beginning of the conflict, and the levels of violence in Sudan are getting worse. At the beginning of February, at least 275 people were killed in just one week, a threefold increase on the previous week’s death toll.
The group’s deputy leader, Abdul Rahim Dagalo, who is under American sanctions, was greeted by hundreds of cheering people as he arrived at the elaborate event, held at a state-owned convention center in downtown Nairobi.
Mr. Dagalo did not speak at the event, and a promised charter meant to pave the way for a parallel government in R.S.F.-controlled areas was not signed. Officials said they needed another three days to negotiate the terms of the charter with Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, the leader of another Sudanese rebel faction, who sat beside Mr. Dagalo.
The latest massacre comes as senior RSF leaders and allied figures arrived in the Kenyan capital to set the wheels in motion for the formation of a parallel government in areas the paramilitary group controls.
Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy commander of the RSF and brother of its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (commonly known as Hemeti), arrived in Nairobi on Tuesday for the two-day conference.
A political charter “for the government of peace and unity”, as it’s being dubbed, is set to be signed on Wednesday.