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.

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.