In Darfur, pledges of ‘never again’ ring hollow in the face of genocide 

This April, world leaders grimly marked the one-year anniversary of the conflict engulfing Sudan. 

Countries pledged more support for humanitarian aid and relief. The United Nations and others pleaded with the warring parties for the violence to stop. Yet, Sudan is already headed toward a new cataclysm, another dark chapter in the war with no end in sight. 

A paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces has surrounded El Fasher in North Darfur. The city is the last major urban center in Sudan’s vast Darfur region still under the control of the Sudanese Armed Forces, the army that the RSF has sought to defeat for more than a year. 

Civilians are trapped in the city and afraid of being killed should they attempt to flee, according to the United Nations. Supplies have dwindled, as the city is cut off from outside humanitarian aid. 

Every week, the world gets a broader sense of the crimes occurring in Darfur. 

Human Rights Watch released a massive new report detailing widespread crimes against humanity by the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias targeting non-Arab populations in West Darfur. This campaign of ethnic cleansing has left thousands of people dead and displaced thousands more. 

Sudan’s Darfur region has grappled with this sort of communal violence before. In the early 2000s, the Janjaweed — the Arab militias that were the precursor to the modern RSF — waged a campaign of terror across the landscape, targeting entire villages with annihilation. 

Genocide in Darfur became known across the world as celebrities and others used mass media to draw attention and demand accountability for the crimes.   

That same spotlight from the international community is far less intense in today’s conflict.   

Despite the displacement of millions of people, the war in Sudan has gone overlooked by humanitarian donors and the media as conflict deepens in other regions of the world, such as Ukraine and Gaza. 

The Biden administration only recently appointed a United States special envoy specifically dedicated to Sudan, after months of pleas from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. 

To bring this war to an end, the international community must fully stand with the Sudanese people in their hour of need. Humanitarian access to areas affected by the conflict must be fully guaranteed in accordance with international humanitarian law. The United States must increase the pressure on the United Arab Emirates and others to end military support for the war’s belligerents. And Egypt and other nations must welcome those displaced by the conflict — and end the deportation of Sudanese refugees back into danger. 

Sudan’s plight can no longer be relegated a secondary or tertiary priority in world capitals. The size and scale of the crisis demands a response from the U.N., the United States, and the broader international community that reflects the severity of the conflict. 

In Darfur, “never again” should be more than a slogan we tell ourselves after the fact. “Never again” must begin here and now — lest future generations be subject to these atrocities once more. 

Eskinder Negash is the president of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nonprofit, non-governmental, international organization that fights for the rights of refugees globally. He is a former refugee from Eritrea.