Sudan's Humanitarian Crisis Deepens as War, Climate Shocks, and Limited Arms Embargo Converge

Sudan is running out of time. The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which erupted in April 2023, has fractured the country into competing zones of control—the SAF holding the north and center including Khartoum, the RSF entrenched in Darfur and parts of the south—and in the spaces between, a humanitarian system is collapsing. Aid organizations are sounding the alarm with numbers that strain comprehension: 24.6 million people are experiencing acute food insecurity. Nearly 825,000 children under five are severely malnourished. Another 4.2 million children and pregnant or breastfeeding women face acute malnutrition. More than 12.4 million Sudanese have been displaced from their homes, either internally or across borders. The death toll remains uncertain—estimates range from 40,000 to 250,000—because reliable counting is impossible amid active fighting.

The timing compounds the catastrophe. The fighting has intensified precisely during the planting season, when farmers should be preparing fields and sowing crops. Instead, thousands are fleeing their homes. In October, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network warned that several areas, including camps for internally displaced people in Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan, face what the international community calls Catastrophe—the highest classification on the food security scale. One displacement camp, Tawila, now holds more than 700,000 people, a population larger than Frankfurt, Germany, crammed into a single location in less than three years. The camp relies on just one hospital capable of performing Caesarean sections. The 2026 Humanitarian Response Plan calls for $2.9 billion to address the crisis. So far, only $1.2 billion has arrived—41 percent of what is needed.

Nature is compounding the war's destruction. This year brought a massive heatwave that cut power for up to twelve hours daily in some regions. Riverbeds have dried. Fields lie barren. The Rapid Support Forces have employed scorched-earth tactics, and the environment itself has been degraded by combat. Yet in other parts of Sudan, heavy rains and localized flooding have created a different kind of devastation. The drought affects roughly half the country. Across both conditions, a critical shortage of fertilizer and diesel has crippled agriculture. Sudan imports both commodities through shipping routes controlled by geopolitical forces beyond its borders—fertilizer and diesel travel from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Iran has been blocking the Hormuz route as part of wider regional conflict. Houthi rebels in Yemen, aligned with Iran, have threatened and disrupted shipping through Bab el-Mandeb. The result is stark: fertilizer supply collapsed from 450,000 metric tons to roughly 50,000 in 2026. Diesel shortages have driven up transportation costs for humanitarian goods and agricultural supplies. In September 2026, staple food and fuel prices in Sudan spiked sharply.

The international response has been fractured and insufficient. The SAF receives official backing from Egypt, Turkey, Russia, and Iran. The RSF is widely believed to be supported by the United Arab Emirates, though Abu Dhabi denies this. Both sides have foreign patrons willing to supply weapons. In October, the UN Security Council extended an arms embargo—but only for Darfur, and only until December 11. Calls for a nationwide embargo failed. A broader embargo would have restricted drone supplies in particular, a significant constraint given that drone strikes have become the leading cause of civilian casualties in Sudan as of 2026. Sudan has become one of the world's largest theaters for drone warfare. The SAF's permanent representative to the United Nations opposed expanding the embargo, arguing it would disproportionately hamper the official army on the battlefield. The RSF, by contrast, obtains weapons through informal channels—trafficking with other militias, private military contractors, and regional traders. Because the RSF sources arms from multiple actors and networks, a single embargo is difficult to enforce against them. The result is asymmetrical: a nationwide embargo might weaken the SAF while leaving the RSF relatively unaffected.

What emerges is a system of compounding failures. The war prevents planting and harvesting. Climate shocks destroy crops and infrastructure. Fertilizer and fuel cannot reach farmers because of regional conflicts thousands of miles away. International funding falls short of need. Foreign powers continue arming both sides. The health system is approaching collapse. In the Tawila camp alone, 700,000 people depend on a single hospital for emergency obstetric care. A UN official who visited the camp recently said she struggled to find words for what she witnessed. The humanitarian needs are growing while resources to meet them shrink. Without a nationwide arms embargo—and without the political will to enforce one—the foreign backers will continue fueling a conflict that makes it nearly impossible for aid to reach the people who need it most. The planting season is passing. Winter approaches. The numbers suggest that Sudan's crisis is not stabilizing but deepening.