Episcopal Parish Network hosts webinar to give update on Sudanese civil war, humanitarian crisis

[Episcopal News Service] Over 20,000 people have been killed and at least 11 million people have been displaced since the latest Sudanese civil war broke out in 2023. Despite the United Nations and other international agencies declaring the conflict one of the worst ongoing humanitarian crises worldwide, it has largely been overshadowed by other wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. 

To help spread awareness of the large-scale consequences of the war in Sudan, the Episcopal Parish Network hosted a webinar presenting an overview of the conflict, what’s happening today and information on how Episcopalians can support the Sudanese people.

“Sudan is barely in the news while one of the worst humanitarian crises is happening,” Niemat Ahmadi, founder and president of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Darfur Women Action Group, said during the Dec. 10 webinar, titled “Crisis in the Sudans: Action Needed to Save Lives.”

Ahmadi is a native of North Darfur in western Sudan and a survivor of the war in Darfur that lasted from 2003 to 2020. During that time, in 2011 South Sudan gained independence from Sudan. The military overthrew Sudan’s civilian transitional government in October 2021.

In April 2023, fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, two rival military factions, erupted into a large-scale conflict in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, which rapidly spread throughout the country. The war has exacerbated an ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by long-term political instability and economic pressures. Most of the Sudanese population now faces famine as diseases spread, including cholera and dengue fever, and the country has the world’s largest internal displacement crisis. The United Nations said the war has triggered the “world’s worst hunger crisis.”

This is the third Sudanese civil war since 1955. The genocide in Darfur was a separate conflict related to the civil wars. It drew worldwide attention through advocacy from the Save Darfur Coalition.

“Save Darfur was a cry heard throughout the world in those [early years of the war in Darfur], but it remains a sad fact to this day that the crisis in Sudan is still not covered by the world press with the same attention as are the equally horrific ongoing crises in Gaza and Ukraine,” said Anita Sanborn, president of the American Friends of the Episcopal Church of the Sudans, or AFRECS, and the webinar’s moderator.

Founded in 2005, AFRECS is a network of individuals, churches, dioceses and other organizations that seeks to provide humanitarian aid in Sudan and South Sudan, and to address the pastoral and peacebuilding necessities of the Episcopal Church of Sudan and the Episcopal Church of South Sudan. This includes producing initiatives where American allies can support both churches.

Tom Staal is a retired United States Agency for International Development counselor who previously served as director for Sudan. He’s also a board member of AFRECS. He said during the webinar that the 500,000 internally displaced people temporarily residing at the Zamzam refugee camp in North Darfur are experiencing famine and high mortality rates. However, the war has made it “really difficult” to assist.

“The problem is we just can’t access the areas where the worst fighting is right now. …Trying to get food into the midst of fighting is very difficult,” Staal said.

A report released in July by Amnesty International alleges that the U.S.-allied United Arab Emirates has been equipping the Rapid Support Forces, an Arab-majority paramilitary group that committed crimes against humanity during the war in Darfur, with military technology made in France. The Rapid Support Forces have also been accused of ethnic cleansing and further crimes against humanity throughout the ongoing war.

“I don’t think the world really grasps how [race factors into] the extreme atrocities being committed against people,” said Tom Prichard, executive director of the Fairfax, Virginia-based Sudan Sunrise, a nonprofit that facilitates reconciliation efforts between Sudan and South Sudan, during the webinar.

At the start of the war, the Rapid Support Forces seized All Saints Anglican Cathedral in Khartoum and converted it into an operation base.

In July, Amnesty International also reported that China, Russia, Turkey and Yemen have also been supplying weapons into Sudan, breaching the United Nations’ arms embargo on the Northeast African country.

On Dec. 1 and 2, the Rapid Support Forces attacked Zamzam, killing at least eight people and injuring many others. The shelling further disrupted humanitarian organizations from delivering food and emergency relief supplies. The United Nations and the U.S. Department of State condemned the attack.

Ahmadi said Americans, individually and as congregations, can help bring more attention to the crisis and encourage support for civilians by creating grassroots mobilization and pressuring the U.S. government to provide humanitarian assistance, and to stop selling arms to the United Arab Emirates. This can be accomplished, she said, through letter-writing campaigns, including letters to the editor of local and regional news outlets.

“We need to sustain engagement and also make sure that we educate new members [of Congress],” Ahmadi said. “The more we do at the grassroots level, at the congregations’ level and churches and interfaith community – they are instrumental in terms of influencing and impact and putting pressure on our representatives, our elected officials, to do what we want them to do.”

Ahmadi also said it’s “very important” for the United States to impose sanctions on countries with growing Arab Islamic ideology, including Chad, the Central African Republic and Libya, before they become a “terrorist hub.”

“If it is not prevented today, tomorrow, they will be forced to respond,” she said. “But by that time, it will be too late, let alone the suffering of the people of Sudan.”

At the 81st General Convention in June in Louisville, Kentucky, the House of Bishops and House of Deputies passed several resolutions addressing Sudan, including D047, “Response to the crisis in Sudan and support for the Episcopal Church of Sudan.” The resolution calls for The Episcopal Church to support civilians in Sudan through various means, including encouraging donations to Episcopal Relief & Development and the American Friends of the Episcopal Church of the Sudans to provide humanitarian assistance.

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.