Sudan’s war and aid squeeze
Sudan’s conflict has entered its fourth year and the country is effectively split between a military-backed government in Khartoum and an RSF administration in Darfur as fighting hardens regional divides ( ). Humanitarian indicators are dire: reports say millions face displacement and hunger, more than 8 million children and young people are out of school, and women and girls are experiencing severe protections crises, even as international donors pledged $1.5bn in Berlin ( ).
Sudan’s war has entered its fourth year with no sign of a settlement, as the army holds Khartoum and the Rapid Support Forces tighten their grip in much of Darfur. (apnews.com) The fighting began on April 15, 2023, after a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. By April 2026, the conflict had hardened into rival administrations, with the military-backed government operating from central and eastern Sudan and the Rapid Support Forces building parallel authority in the west. (apnews.com, aljazeera.com) Aid agencies say 33.7 million people in Sudan now need humanitarian assistance in 2026, and UNICEF says more than 9 million people are displaced inside the country, making it the world’s largest internal displacement crisis. Donors meeting in Berlin on April 15 pledged about 1.3 billion euros, or roughly $1.5 billion, for relief. (reliefweb.int, unicef.org, aljazeera.com) That money falls short of the UN appeal. The 2026 Sudan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan seeks $4.2 billion for people inside Sudan, and a separate regional refugee plan pushes total requirements even higher. (reliefweb.int, news.un.org) Schools and universities have been hit alongside food systems and clinics. UNESCO said this week that 19 million children are out of school in Sudan and about 80 percent of higher education institutions are no longer operational. (sudan.un.org) Women and girls face some of the war’s worst abuses. UN Women said the number of people needing sexual-violence support has quadrupled in a year, with attacks reported in homes, at checkpoints and during displacement. (miragenews.com) Diplomacy has not caught up with the battlefield. Co-hosts of the Berlin conference backed a five-party mechanism to push for a political process, but Sudan’s government criticized the meeting because no Sudanese representatives were invited. (gov.uk, yahoo.com) The war’s geography now shapes its politics. Army gains in Khartoum have not broken the Rapid Support Forces in Darfur, and continued battles around El Fasher have kept Darfur at the center of both military strategy and the famine response. (aljazeera.com, news.un.org) Three years after the war began, Sudan is no longer a short-term emergency on the diplomatic calendar. It is a divided country with a widening aid gap, millions uprooted from home, and a civilian crisis that keeps growing faster than the money pledged to contain it. (apnews.com, reliefweb.int, aljazeera.com)
