Skip to footer

To the people of Sudan: We see you

For many people, Sudan’s civil war has been an inscrutable news story. By reading personal accounts, we bear witness to distant realities.

|
Guy Peterson
Refugee children carry freshly picked leaves near Sudan’s Rabang internal displacement camp. The scarcity of food has forced people to forage for alternative sources of sustenance.

Earlier this year, I received an email from a Monitor reader asking why we had published so little about the civil war in Sudan. The message jolted me. As the Monitor’s Africa editor, I realized I was neglecting an urgent story because I was listening to a cynical voice in my head that said, No one will care. The world is full of terrible news at the moment, and frankly, I wondered if people had the bandwidth for even more.

I should have known better. Monitor readers do care. Having empathy for one place doesn’t mean you can’t also have empathy for another. It isn’t a zero-sum game. This was a useful reminder, because I have always felt that my job as a journalist is to draw the world in closer. I think the best reporting is the kind that helps us brush up against people and situations that feel far away, inexplicable, or simply hopeless.

For many people, understandably, Sudan’s civil war has been that kind of distant, inscrutable news story. Since April 2023, two feuding generals have torn the country apart, transforming their own scuffle for power into a civil war that has claimed as many as 150,000 lives. More than 10 million people have fled their homes, and 1 in 2 Sudanese regularly do not have enough to eat. Nearly a million people are on the brink of famine.

With numbers so big, it is easy to forget sometimes that what we are talking about here are human lives. Each of the 150,000 people who died left a gaping hole in the life of someone who loved them. Each of those forced to leave home mourns the things they left behind: their best friend, their beloved car, the way the sunset looked from their bedroom window.

In the Oct. 28 issue of the Monitor Weekly, we meet a few of the people behind those statistics in a series of three stories. These accounts are a reminder that war can happen to anyone, and that living in peace is a fragile privilege. Reading them is more than a way to learn about a faraway conflict. It is a way to bear witness, to say to the people of Sudan: We see you. We know you are suffering. We will not turn away.

Personal stories bring the reality of Sudan’s civil war home

As a journalist, our correspondent has documented Sudan’s descent into a brutal civil war. But the conflict isn’t just a story for him. It’s also the terrifying backdrop of his own life, as he explains in this essay about the birth of his daughter.

A network of community aid groups is providing pivotal support for communities affected by Sudan’s civil war. By doing so, they are also showing that the ties that bind Sudanese are stronger than the violence tearing their country apart.

Sudan’s civil war has forced more than 10 million people to flee their homes, one of the worst displacement crises on earth. The journey of one such family, the al-Natheers, shines light onto what that situation is like for the people living through it.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to To the people of Sudan: We see you
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/From-the-Editors/2024/1029/sudan-civil-war-bear-witness
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe