Sudanese Conflict, Refugee Crisis and Lessons for South Asia

Contributions from: Susanne Jaspars, Marga Fekadu Angerasa, Behaylu Giram

The Sudanese conflict has plunged the region into another cycle of instability and crisis. It therefore becomes critical to look at the situation from a regional perspective to analyse and prepare for how this could affect a much larger population in the region, and what lessons South Asia can learn from it. 

In one of the webinar sessions in 2023, HOISA discussed the challenges for the humanitarian network and response in wake of the current, ongoing, devastating catastrophe that Sudan is facing. Inequality, war, aggressive violence, bombings and economic crisis has crippled the country since April 2023. The country’s state is essentially the result of the conflict between Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdul Fattah Al-Buran and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by General Mohammaed Hamdan Dagalo. These two generals in fact worked together to oust the Al-Bashir government in 2019 during the country-wide youth-led protest against the former president and military officer Omar-al-Bashir. The transitional government formed in 2019 was supposed to make way for a civilian-led government, and comprised of both civilians and military personels. However, in 2021 the country witnessed a military coup that forced the then prime minister Amdalla Hamdok to resign. The current power struggle and conflict remains between the RSF and SAF, which began with RSF attacking SAF bases across Sudan, including Khartoum. 

Since the fighting broke out in Khartoum, the civilians have witnessed extreme violence, air-strikes, human trafficking, displacement, high inflation, killings, rebellions, rapes and migration. The violence has spread to other parts of the country such as Darfur and southern Sudan. Sudan also being a home to refugees and IDPs from surrounding region, makes this crisis particularly difficult. Even before the war, 15 million people were in need of aid. That number has increased to 25 million people in the region. Darfur has witnessed violence for over 20 years, and already had over 3 million people in camps. Because of this, the situation has aggravated and has left Sudanese, refugees, IDPs stranded, as they are forced to either displace within Sudan, or return back to the countries they escaped from or look for another country. 

In terms of humanitarian challenges, the disappearance of state - banks, unreliable communications, electricity and water have caused prices to sky rocket. The destruction, looting and raiding of warehouses for providing aid and relief has particularly affected the humanitarian response. Hospitals and medical facilities have either been destroyed or looted, causing a scarcity of basic life-saving drugs in the country. In such a situation to carry large amounts of cash for relief and aid becomes very difficult. 

Interestingly, digital transfers have been functioning in some areas. However on digitalisation of relief procedures such as registration of the refugee, recording fingerprint and photographs of people who are given aids have met with some criticism and reluctance in certain communities and classes within Sudan. This does open a larger question about the ownership of the data being collected. While the data provides much valuable information to take necessary decisions to provide relief, it can also be said that it is being robbed from the people who are victims as they have no say in how their data is being used. 

While several local initiatives, youth-led and religious organisations are trying to help people on the ground, the crisis has already begun trickling into the neighbouring countries. Over 650000 people have already crossed the borders. While Sudanese refugees are welcomed by Ethiopia, the same is not true for countries in the region. Particularly in Ethiopia, because of the huge inflow of people along with the already present IDPs and refugees in the country (about 2.72 million), the country is facing huge inflation and lack of resources and infrastructure to host people. And with migration, problems such as keeping a track of refugees, arbitrary detention, lack of paperwork, and exploitation also comes up.

It is unfortunate that despite having no signs of peace, and tremendous challenges in providing the necessary relief to people on ground, the international media has not given the much needed attention to this crisis. Perhaps when it comes to the politics of humanitarian response, some regions do matter more than others. 

While we must send out a plea to different countries and humanitarian organisations to join hands, respect the humanitarian and refugee laws and resolve the difficult situation Sudan is facing, we must also observe and learn lessons for South Asia and other regions.

1. Defusing the crisis: The case of Sudan points to the urgency of resolving political and economic crisis at an early stage. South Asia has particularly seen crisis grow with time in several instances such as the partition and mass migration around 1947 and the recently growing religious extremism and nationalism in the region. The latter particularly must be addressed collectively to defuse tensions.

2. Digitalisation of relief work: More discussion and policies are required when it comes to digitalisation of paperwork for refugees. It is important to ask what say do refugees have in their own data, and who really owns it.

3. Ground-up approach: We must think and ask what refugees demand from the various technologies that we have at our disposal today. Perhaps there are ways in which we can make certain processes within the humanitarian response more accessible and inclusive.

4. Using design, art and new methodologies: Use of more visual technologies and models in humanitarian research can try and bring more attention to crisis such as that of Sudan, to ensure necessary media attention is maintained for its resolution. Ekene Ijeoma, an artist and researcher, has extensively worked on how social and political systems unjustly affect people and develops large-scale participatory, interactive, and data-driven installations, sculptures, performances, websites, and apps that poetically expose their inequalities or engage people in collaboratively changing them. Such creative collaboration can bring forth the attention to regions often neglected.

5. Mapping the funds: It would help to observe and map how the life of social science research funding shifts from one economic group region to another, in order to better understand the network.

6. Climate Justice: In every disaster management and relief effort, we must also prioritize the environmental concerns and climate change. These needs to be well integrated with humanitarian efforts.

Authors: Behaylu Giram (Researcher), Susanne Jaspars (Senior Research Fellow at IHSA), Marga Fekadu Angerasa (Lawyer and Lecturer at Wolkite University (Wolkite, Ethiopia)), Mihir Bhatt (AIDMI) and  Khayal Trivedi (HOISA).