GoKawiilAnalysis · Sudan · 20.04.2026
Three years of war. 12 million displaced. 25 million going hungry. A documented genocide in El Fasher. And an international system watching on, because its most influential members are profiting on both sides of the battlefield. A stocktake of the largest humanitarian catastrophe of our time, barely a headline in Europe.
If you want to understand how the international system works when nobody wants to look, look at Sudan. Since April 15, 2023, the Sudanese Armed Forces under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, have been fighting a war that after three years dwarfs every comparable crisis of the present. More than 12 million people have been displaced, making Sudan, according to the UNDP, the world’s largest displacement crisis. 25 million are going hungry. Famine has been officially declared in North Darfur and parts of Greater Kordofan.
And as the numbers grow, the international response slows down. The UN Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for 2024 requested 2.7 billion US dollars. By mid-year, less than 40 percent had arrived. The UN Fact-Finding Mission report of February 2026 documents in El Fasher “the hallmarks of genocide” against the Zaghawa and the Fur. Thousands were murdered in three days. The rest of the world is debating other things.
What happened in El Fasher
Until October 26, 2025, El Fasher was the last city in Darfur still under the control of the Sudanese army and allied forces. The RSF besieged it for 18 months. According to the UN report, the population was during this time “systematically weakened by starvation, deprivation, trauma and confinement”. When the city fell, what followed was, in the words of the UN Human Rights Office, “a wave of violence, shocking in scale and brutality”.
The numbers from the UN report. In the first three days of the capture, at least 6,000 killings were documented. 4,400 inside the city. 1,600 more along escape routes. The UN writes explicitly that the actual death toll from the week-long offensive was “undoubtedly significantly higher”. The governor of Darfur spoke of 27,000 killed in the first three days alone. The Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory estimated 100,000. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab assessed that of the 250,000 civilians remaining in the city, nearly all had been killed, died, been displaced, or were in hiding.
RSF fighters, according to survivor testimony, said things like “Is there anyone Zaghawa here? If we find Zaghawa, we will kill them all” and “We want to eliminate anything black from Darfur”. Men and boys under 50 were specifically targeted, killed or abducted. Women and girls of the Zaghawa and Fur communities were systematically raped, often in groups, sometimes for hours or days. Those perceived as Arab were often spared. This is genocide by every standard of international law, and the UN mission says so: “The RSF acted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Zaghawa and Fur communities in El Fasher. These are the hallmarks of genocide.”
Sudan by the numbers (April 2026) Duration of war: 3 years (since 15.04.2023)
Total displaced: approx. 14 million (UN, April 2026)
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