'Forgotten war': alarm Over Crisis in Sudan

Sudan is suffering from the world's largest humanitarian crisis and its civilians are continuing to pay the price for inaction by the global community, according to NGOs and the UN, as the country's civil war enters its third year.

- Rachel Savage

Two years to the day after fighting erupted in Khartoum between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), hundreds of people were feared killed in RSF attacks on refugee camps in western Darfur in the latest apparent atrocity of a war marked by brutality.

The consequences for Sudan's 51 million people have been devastating. Tens of thousands are reportedly dead. Hundreds of thousands face famine. Almost 13 million people have been displaced, 4 million of those to neighbouring countries.

"Sudan is now worse off than ever before," said Elise Nalbandian, Oxfam's regional advocacy manager, said. "The largest humanitarian crisis, largest displacement crisis, largest hunger crisis... It's breaking all sorts of wrong" records." Daniel O'Malley, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Sudan said "massive scale" violations of international humanitarian law were taking place in the conflict.

"The civilian population, irrespective of where they are in the country, have been trapped between one, two or more parties. And they have been bearing the brunt of everything. The numbers are just mind-boggling."