Sudan's war and the Africa we don't see

Last Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “Many have given up on Sudan, but that is wrong. It’s morally wrong when we see so many civilians beheaded, infants as young as one subjected to sexual violence, more people facing famine than anywhere else in the world.... We simply cannot look away.”

- Gwynne Dyer

But Mr Lammy was wrong. Of course, we can look away. We do it all the time, especially when the disaster is happening in Africa. And by the way, “we” includes many if not most Africans themselves: they too feel exhausted by the seemingly endless media reports of turmoil, violence and injustice.

Mr Lammy was hosting an international meeting in London to mark the second anniversary of the outbreak of the Sudanese civil war, and all the usual things were said, all the standard (quite modest) pledges of money for starving Sudanese refugees made.

And at the end, everybody went home in despair.

The civil war in Sudan is truly terrible, with no hope of better in sight. The death toll, mostly civilians, is estimated at 150,000 but could plausibly be anything up to half a million. Twelve million people, more than a quarter of the population, have fled from their homes, and Khartoum, the capital (which recently changed hands), looks only slightly better than Gaza.