UN Security Council Meeting on Sudan 16 June 2025

From UN Security Council

What's In Blue 
Posted Thursday, 12 June 2025 - copy in full:

Sudan: Closed Consultations*

On Monday afternoon (16 June), Security Council members will convene for closed consultations on Sudan. Denmark, Slovenia, and the UK (the penholder on the file) requested the meeting to receive an update on the humanitarian situation in the country. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Joyce Msuya is the anticipated briefer.*

More than two years since fighting erupted on 15 April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the violence has evolved into a protracted armed conflict, resulting in widespread civilian casualties, mass displacement, the destruction of critical infrastructure, severe food and water shortages, and severe violations of international humanitarian law. The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate amid ongoing hostilities and the growing use of advanced weaponry, including long-range drones, which has further intensified the scale and complexity of the conflict.

Monday’s meeting takes place against the backdrop of escalating attacks on civilians, civilian infrastructure, humanitarian personnel, and aid facilities. According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), since the beginning of this year, attacks on critical infrastructure such as power stations, water sub-stations, and oil refineries across the country have caused widespread electricity outages and severely disrupted access to essential rights and services, including safe drinking water, healthcare and food supplies. In early May, the RSF reportedly launched a series of drone strikes targeting key civilian and military infrastructure in Port Sudan—the country’s de facto administrative capital—and Kassala, cities which had until then remained largely insulated from the conflict. In mid-May, RSF drone strikes reportedly hit three power stations in the city of Omdurman, causing widespread electricity outages across Khartoum state. (For background and more information, see the brief on Sudan in our June 2025 Monthly Forecast and 18 May What’s in Blue story.)

The security situation in El Fasher and the wider North Darfur region remains highly volatile. In mid-April, the RSF intensified its siege and attacks on the city through shelling, drone strikes, and ground operations, resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties, the killing of aid workers, and mass displacement. According to the UN, on 29 May, a World Food Programme (WFP) facility in El Fasher reportedly came under repeated shelling by the RSF, causing significant damage to a critical humanitarian hub. On 2 June, a humanitarian aid convoy comprising 15 trucks from the WFP and UNICEF came under attack in Al Koma, which is located approximately 80 kilometres from El Fasher. The attack resulted in the deaths of five personnel, injured several others, and destroyed multiple trucks and critical humanitarian supplies. A 3 June joint WFP/UNICEF press statement said that the aid convoy’s route had been shared in advance and that all parties on the ground had been informed of the convoy’s location. The statement called for an immediate investigation and for those responsible to be held accountable. At the time of writing, it is unclear who is responsible for the attack, for which the warring parties have blamed each other. On Monday, Msuya and some Council members might underscore the need to ensure accountability for such attacks and break the cycle of impunity.

Elsewhere in Sudan, hostilities have intensified in the Kordofan region, with the parties reportedly exchanging heavy drone and artillery fire on multiple fronts, causing significant harm to civilians. On 30 May, the Eldaman International Hospital in El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, was reportedly struck in a drone attack by the RSF, killing at least six health workers and injuring more than 15 others. In recent days, airstrikes have also reportedly targeted residential areas of El Obeid city, resulting in the injury of civilians.

At Monday’s meeting, Msuya is likely to describe how the conflict dynamics are impacting the humanitarian situation in the country, particularly in areas experiencing intense fighting. He may provide an update on efforts by the UN and its partners to respond to the unfolding crisis and highlight the persistent impediments to humanitarian access in regions where needs are rapidly escalating. According to OCHA’s latest humanitarian access snapshot, which was published on 4 June, access across Sudan remains severely constrained due to ongoing insecurity, bureaucratic obstacles, and mass displacement, particularly in South and West Kordofan and North Darfur states. In the Kordofan region, heavy fighting has blocked key humanitarian routes and disrupted supply chains, while shifting front lines and long distances from key logistics hubs, such as Port Sudan and the Adré crossing at the Chad-Sudan border, have severely hampered operations. Meanwhile, access in Khartoum remained challenging due to insecurity and bureaucratic restrictions, such as delays in processing travel permits and visas for aid workers.

As hostilities persist, Sudan’s health crisis has deepened, with the healthcare system collapsing, particularly in conflict-affected areas. Since the conflict erupted in April 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) has verified 156 attacks on healthcare facilities, resulting in 318 deaths and 273 injuries. Meanwhile, approximately 20.3 million people—over 40 percent of the country’s population—are in urgent need of health assistance, with more than two-thirds of Sudan’s states battling three or more disease outbreaks simultaneously.

The cholera outbreak that started in July 2024 has since spread to 92 localities across 13 of Sudan’s 18 states, infecting 74,000 people and causing 1,826 deaths. Since May, the WHO has reported a rapid increase in cholera cases in Khartoum state, with over 16,000 cases and 239 deaths documented. The WHO attributed the recent surge in cholera cases to poor water, sanitation and hygiene, caused by a shortage of safe water following attacks on major power plants and water sources. Estimates suggest that approximately $40 million is needed to rehabilitate water infrastructure in Khartoum state. (For more information, see our 12 March What’s in Blue story.)

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as at 28 May, there were approximately 10.1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan, a decrease of 13 percent compared to the country’s highest-ever recorded population of IDPs early this year. The IOM attributed this reduction to increased return movements, particularly to Khartoum, Sennar, and Al Jazirah states. Since April 2023, more than four million people have sought refuge in Sudan’s neighbouring countries. Returnees continue to face critical humanitarian needs, with limited access to basic services and persistent protection risks. For instance, recent media reports have indicated the presence of landmines and unexploded ordnance in areas of return.

In a 10 June statement following his visit to Khartoum, the WFP’s Sudan representative, Laurent Bukera, announced that the WFP has re-established its presence in the area with the opening of an office in Omdurman. He noted that, with people returning to conflict-affected areas like Khartoum, pressure on overstretched resources will intensify. He underlined the urgent need to restore basic services and accelerate recovery through coordinated efforts with local authorities, national non-governmental organisations (NGOs), UN agencies, and humanitarian partners.

On Monday, Msuya is likely to underscore the urgent need to act to alleviate the suffering of millions in Sudan. He may call on the international community to scale up its humanitarian response to match the scale and urgency of the crisis. He might also underline the need for enhanced and flexible funding for the humanitarian response in Sudan and highlight the urgent need for full, rapid, and sustained humanitarian access. At the time of writing, Sudan’s 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP), requiring $4.16 billion, was only approximately 14percent funded.

Council members may reiterate key points from their press statement, agreed earlier this evening (12 June), which was authored by the UK. The statement recalled resolution 2736 of 13 June 2024, which demanded that the RSF halt the siege of El Fasher and called for an immediate halt to the fighting and for de-escalation in and around El Fasher. In their statement, Council members condemned the 2 June attack on the WFP/UNICEF humanitarian convoy and the 29 May shelling by the RSF that damaged a WFP facility in El Fasher. They also expressed deep concern over the impact of the conflict on humanitarian operations, including reports of air attacks by the RSF in Port Sudan, Kassala and Khartoum. The statement reiterated that deliberate attacks against humanitarian personnel, their premises, and assets may constitute war crimes and called on the parties to abide by their commitments under the 11 May 2023 Jeddah Declaration as well as by their obligations under international law.

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**Post-script (13 June, 3:45 pm EST): After the publication of this story, the meeting was pushed from Friday (13 June) to Monday (16 June), due to the scheduling of an emergency meeting on Iran on Friday afternoon. The story was amended to reflect the change in timing as well as the briefer; while Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher was expected to brief on Friday, the briefer expected for Monday is Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Joyce Msuya.

View original: https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2025/06/sudan-closed-consultations-7.php

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NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor

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Image: Plumpy'Nut, a ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF)

Read more at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut

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Sudan: World's largest humanitarian crisis in terms of displacement. 12.7m forcibly displaced. 25m in famine

Presser | United Nations 
Friday, 11 April 2025 - full copy:

Sudan: World's largest humanitarian crisis in terms of displacement

Press Conference by Shaun Hughes, World Food Programme (WFP) Regional Emergency Coordinator for the Sudan Crisis, on the situation in Sudan.

Senior World Food Programme (WFP) official in Sudan Shaun Hughes said, “By any metric, this is the world's largest humanitarian crisis in terms of displacement,” adding that “four out of every five people displaced are women and children.”

Hughes briefed reporters remotely from Nairobi today (10 Apr) on the situation in Sudan.

He said, “12.7 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes. Over eight million people displaced internally, and four million across borders arriving to countries that are already facing high levels of hunger and humanitarian needs.”

In terms of hunger, the WFP official said, “this is the only place in the world where famine is currently confirmed, and only the third famine to be classified this century.”

Hughes continued, “The scale of what is unfolding in Sudan threatens to dwarf much of what we've seen over previous decades. In the Zamzam camp alone, which has been under siege for several months. There are over 400,000 people.”

The Regional Emergency Coordinator added, “Across the country, nearly 25 million people, or half the population, face extreme hunger. Nearly five million children and mothers are acutely malnourished.”

“This is a man-made crisis, man-made because it is driven by conflict, not by drought or floods or earthquakes, and man-made because of the obstruction of access to humanitarian assistance by parties to the conflict,” the WFP official stressed.

Hughes highlighted that WFP’s goal is to scale up to reach seven million people by mid-year, “focusing primarily on those 27 areas that are classified as in famine or risk of famine.”

He continued, “we need to be able to quickly move humanitarian assistance to where it is needed, including through frontlines, across borders, within contested areas, and without lengthy bureaucratic processes.”

“We need to re-establish offices and staff presence across all areas of the country, including the Darfur and Kordofan states, so that we can be close to the people we serve and monitor assistance and the situation as it unfolds. We need to be able to obtain visas for staff and custom clearances for goods and equipment,” the WFP official added.

He stressed that humanitarian agencies alone don't have the influence to negotiate this, “it requires the world to pay attention and coherent and tenacious engagement from the international community, particularly countries that have influence on those waging war.”

The Regional Emergency Coordinator for Sudan Crisis, World Food Programme (WFP):

For the next six months in Sudan, in order to reach the objective of assisting seven million people, WFP has an 80 percent funding gap amounting to $650 million and another $150 million shortfall to take care of people that are fleeing across borders into Chad, into South Sudan, into the Central African Republic and elsewhere.

“Without funding, we're faced with the choice to either cut the number of people receiving assistance, or to cut the amount of assistance that people receive,” Hughes said.

He explained that the cut is already happening. “This month, we've reduced rations in famine areas to 70 percent of what people need, and in areas that are at risk of famine to 50 percent. The funding we need is not only for food assistance, but also for the joint services that we provide to the broader humanitarian response, including humanitarian air services and logistics services,” Hughes said.

Asked about the funding gap, the WFP official said, “none can be attributed to the broader cuts in US foreign assistance. Fortunately, all allocations that the US government has made to Sudan remain effective, for which we are grateful.”

“I think more broadly that the outlook globally for funding of humanitarian assistance is quite disastrous due to a number of changes in the approach by donors,” he concluded.

Transcript

Follow along using the transcript at video: https://youtu.be/UwQIXSImTGs

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Kristof is on Chad-Sudan border: Shame of hunger belongs to those who are powerful, well fed and blind

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: Longtime American columnist and Sudan watcher Nicholas Kristof is back in the saddle on the Chad-Sudan border. 

Kristof is a great storyteller who never lets a few facts get in his way. In his article below, he says a US partner, the UAE, supplies weapons to RSF militia in Sudan but omits to say the US is one of the leading arms traders to UAE. 

Trouble is, eye popping online news tends to spread quickly around the world and is viewed as fact before the truth has had time to get its boots on.

If Nicholas says (he doesn't) 150,000 died in Sudan and others say 15-23K, so be it. Readers of his news in New York Times assume NYT news is true.

In June, UN stated 15,500 fatalities reported in 1,400 incidents targeting civilians; 9.5M displaced – 7.3M internally, 1.9M in neighbouring countries.

This month, ACLED says "since fighting first broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 15 April 2023, ACLED records over 7,623 events of political violence and more than 23,105 reported fatalities in Sudan. On 5 September 2024, ACLED released corrections to the Sudan data that updated events with fatalities in West Darfur state, as reported by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its published report titled ‘The Massalit Will Not Come Home’: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan. The new information from HRW resulted in ACLED recording 2,635 additional fatalities in West Darfur during the period of April to November 2023. For more on how ACLED incorporated the information from the HRW report, see this update in the ACLED Knowledge Base".

So, Nicholas is back on the scene. Hold onto your hats Messrs Burhan and Hemeti. Longtime Sudan watchers are alive and well. Vive la révolution! 

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From The New York Times

OPINION editorial by By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist, reporting from the Chad/Sudan border

Dated 18 September 2024. Here is a full copy, for the record and posterity:

I Just Went to Darfur. Here Is What Shattered Me.

Credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

When an Arab militia rampaged through Maryam Suleiman’s village in the Darfur region of Sudan last year and lined up men and boys to massacre, the gunmen were blunt about their purpose.

“We don’t want to see any Black people,” a militia leader said, adding mockingly: “We don’t even want to see black trash bags.” To make his point, Maryam recalled, he shot a donkey because it was black.

Then the militia members executed men and boys who belonged to Black African ethnic groups, she said. 

“They shot my five brothers, one after the other,” Maryam told me, describing how her youngest brother survived the first bullet and called out to her. Then a militia member shot him in the head and sneeringly asked her what she thought of that.

The militia tried to systematically kill all the males over 10, Maryam said, and also killed some younger ones. A 1-day-old boy was thrown to the ground and killed, and one male infant was thrown into a pond to drown, she said.

The gunmen then rounded up the women and girls in a corral to rape, she added. “They raped many, many girls,” she recalled. One man tried to rape Maryam, she said, and when he failed he beat her. She was pregnant and suffered a miscarriage.

“You’re slaves,” Maryam quoted the militia members as saying. “There is no place for you Black people in Sudan.” So Maryam fled to neighboring Chad and is one of more than 10 million Sudanese who have been forcibly displaced since a civil war began last year in the country and ignited pogroms against Black African ethnic groups like hers.

Maryam Suleiman wept as she recounted how a militia in Sudan attacked her village and killed her five brothers. Photo Credit: Nicholas Kristof

The atrocities underway near here are an echo of the Darfur genocide of two decades ago, with the additional complication of famine. But there’s a crucial difference: At that time, world leaders, celebrities and university students vigorously protested the slaughter and joined forces to save hundreds of thousands of lives. Today, in contrast, the world is distracted and silent. So the impunity is allowing violence to go unchecked, which, in turn, is producing what may become the worst famine in half a century or more.

“It’s beyond anything we’ve ever seen,” Cindy McCain, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, told me. “It’s catastrophic.”

“Unless,” she added, “we can get our job done.”

World leaders will convene next week in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly, but they have been mostly indifferent and are unlikely to get the job done. What’s needed is far greater pressure to end the civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the rival Arab militia, while pushing the warring parties to allow humanitarian access. All sides in the war are behaving irresponsibly, so more than half the people of Sudan — 25 million people — have become acutely malnourished already. A famine was formally declared in one area in Sudan in the summer.

WATCH VIDEO 2:18

Nicholas Kristof on the Silent Famine in Darfur

This is what I witnessed — and it shattered me.

Timmo Gaasbeek, a disaster expert who has modeled the crisis for a research institute in the Netherlands, told me that he foresees 13 million people starving to death in Sudan by October 2025, with a margin of error of two million. Such a toll would make this one of the worst famines in world history and the worst since the great Chinese famine of 65 years ago. By way of contrast, the famous Ukraine famine of the 1930s killed perhaps four million people, although estimates vary.

I can’t verify that a cataclysm of that level is approaching. Warring parties blocked me from entering Sudanese areas they controlled, so I reported along the Chad-Sudan border. Arriving refugees described starvation but not yet mass mortality from malnutrition.

All I can say is that whether or not a cataclysmic famine is probable, it is a significant risk. Those in danger are people like Thuraya Muhammad, a slight 17-year-old orphan who told me how her world unraveled when the Rapid Support Forces, the same group that killed Maryam’s five brothers, attacked her village and began burning homes and shooting men and boys.

“So many men were killed, like grains of sand,” she told me.

When Thuraya Muhammad, an orphan because of Sudan’s war, doesn’t have enough food to feed her younger sister and brother, she gives them water to fill their stomachs. Photo Credit: Nicholas Kristof

After slaughtering the men in Thuraya’s village, the militia raped many women and girls, she said. Thuraya’s cousin, a woman of 20, was among those kidnapped by the militia and hasn’t been seen since, she added.

Thuraya’s father was murdered by the militia and her mother had died earlier, so at 16 she was now the head of the household. She led her younger brother and two younger sisters to safety by walking to the Chadian border town of Adré. Gunmen tried to rob them several times, but the family had nothing left to steal.

Now in a refugee camp in Chad, Thuraya works to feed her siblings. Like other refugees, she gets a monthly food allotment from the World Food Program that helps but is insufficient. She supports her family by seeking day jobs washing clothes or cleaning houses (for about 25 cents a day). When she finds work, she and her siblings eat; if not, they may go hungry.

When I dropped by their hut, Thuraya had been unable to find work that day. A friendly neighbor had given her a cup of coffee, but she hadn’t eaten anything since the previous day — and there was no prospect of dinner, either. If there is no food, Thuraya told me, she serves water to her siblings in place of dinner.

She wept.

Thuraya wasn’t crying from her own pangs of hunger. Rather, tears tumbled silently down her cheeks out of shame at her inability to feed her brother and sisters.

“When there isn’t enough food, I give it to my sisters and brother,” she told me, and her younger sister Fatima confirmed that. “I go hungry, or else my neighbors may call me over to eat with them.”

“I’d rather my sisters and brother eat, because they cry when they go hungry,” she said. “And I can’t bear to hear them cry.”

Fatima resists the favoritism and tries to give her sister back some food. But Thuraya won’t take it and goes out, telling her brother and sisters to eat while she finds something for herself. They all know that in a refugee camp of about 200,000 hungry people, she will find nothing.

I’m hoping that Thuraya’s fortitude might inspire President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with world leaders gathering at the United Nations, to summon a similar resolve to tackle slaughter and starvation in Sudan. Donor nations have contributed less than half the sum needed by U.N. agencies to ease Sudan’s food crisis, and they have not insisted forcefully on either providing humanitarian access or on cutting off the flow of weapons that sustains the war.

Biden, who 20 years ago savaged President George W. Bush for not doing enough to stop the Darfur genocide, has provided aid and appointed a special envoy to push for peace talks but has said little about the current crisis. An American partner, the United Arab Emirates, supplies weapons to the militia that slaughtered and raped Thuraya’s neighbors, yet Biden has not publicly demanded that the Emirates cut off that support for killers and rapists.

The upshot of this neglect is the risk not only of a horrendous famine but also of endless war, Sudan’s fragmentation, enormous refugee flows and instability across the region.

So as world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly tuck into fine banquets next week to celebrate their humanitarianism, may they be awakened by thoughts of an orphan of Darfur who ignores her own hunger and divides scraps of bread among her brother and sisters.

Thuraya has no reason to feel ashamed that her siblings are hungry; the shame belongs to those who are powerful, well fed and blind.

What question do you have about the civil war in Sudan and the people affected by it? What more would you like to know? Submit your question or critique in the field below and Nicholas Kristof will try to respond to a selection of queries in a future installment in this series.

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Chad and Sudan? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

View original (currently a free gift unlocked article): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/opinion/darfur-sudan-famine.html

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