Sudan is collapsing, amid relative indifference. Villages have been burned, towns bombed, corpses left to rot in the streets without burial, mass rapes have been comitted, and civilians and children have been forcibly conscripted: 12 months of war has caused a nation of 44 million inhabitants to implode.

At around 8:30 am on Saturday, April 15, 2023, the first exchanges of gunfire tore through Khartoum. Cohorts of paramilitary fighters, mounted on heavily armed vehicles, stormed the airport, the presidential palace and the army headquarters in the heart of Sudan's capital. The lightning ground offensive was met by bombing raids from the air, conducted by the regular army's fighter jets.

Within a few hours, the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as "Hemedti," had spread across the country. One year later, the fighting has not stopped.

On the brink of famine, Sudan is now facing the world's worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN. In response, an international conference for aid to Sudan and neighboring countries was held in Paris on Monday, April 15, co-organized with Germany and the European Union. Much to the dismay of the Sudanese foreign ministry, which, in a statement on Friday, regretted that the conference would take place "without coordination or consultation with its government," none of the parties to the conflict had been invited.

In total, nearly 8 million Sudanese people have been forced to flee the fighting. Of these, over 1.6 million have sought refuge in neighbouring countries. Although the only available death toll, compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) NGO, records 15,000 deaths, the actual figure has been estimated to be three times higher. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people have been killed in the West Darfur state city of El Geneina alone, according to the UN. Not to mention the thousands who have gone missing, the military casualties, and the many unaccounted-for deaths from hunger, disease and a lack of access to medical care.

Tensions between the two armies had been simmering for many months, but the scale of the outbreak of conflict came as a surprise. Since the fall of former president Omar al-Bashir's military and Islamist regime in 2019, the two now-opposed generals had been allies – they had overthrown the civilian transitional government together, at the end of October 2021 – all while perpetuating a simmering competition for power.

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