The UN's top humanitarian and emergency relief official has told NPR that why world leaders have not paid more attention to the civil war in Sudan is the "billion dollar question," and called for the United Nations Security Council to "wake up" and help stop the violence.
Tom Fletcher, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, who recently spent a week in Sudan's Darfur region, has called the area the "epicenter of suffering in the world right now."
Speaking to host Ayesha Rascoe on Weekend Edition Sunday, Fletcher described his visit to Darfur. "You're going through checkpoint after checkpoint manned by child soldiers," he said. "You're meeting people who are starving, who've been displaced many times, victims of sexual violence, victims of horrible torture, brutality."
Fletcher explained that his organisation's work in Sudan is currently only "32% funded", leading to difficult decisions for aid workers on the ground. "We are making these brutal life-and-death choices every day about which lives to save, literally, which projects to cut, which projects to keep," he said. This year, the United States has cut back its foreign aid funding.
"We're doing our best," Fletcher said of his organisation's work in Sudan, but added: "We're overwhelmed because we're dealing with hundreds of thousands of people escaping… and that's just from el-Fasher alone, let alone across the whole of Sudan, where the needs are enormous."
In October, the city of el-Fasher was captured by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after an 18-month siege. The United Nations estimates around 200,000 civilians were trapped in el-Fasher when the army withdrew, and there is evidence that many were systematically killed, with thousands still unaccounted for.
Satellite imagery shows possible mass graves in el-Fasher and beyond, raising fears of suspected genocide. More than 20 years ago, between 2003 and 2005, the Darfur region experienced another genocide, in which it is estimated that at least 200,000 people were killed.
In October, the city of el-Fasher was captured by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group that is at war with Sudan's army. The United Nations estimates around 200,000 civilians were trapped in el-Fasher when the army withdrew. Advocacy groups said many were systematically killed.
Fletcher called el-Fasher a "crime scene", and said his organisation were determined to get more aid teams into the area and also "try to push for accountability" over the bloodshed.
He called for urgent help from other global organisations to stop the violence. "We need the world to act," he said. "We need the [United Nations] Security Council to wake up. We need the great powers of the world to basically say, let's stop arming this conflict."
Fletcher blamed a host of factors for the lack of action on the war in Sudan, which has been raging since April 2023, when fighting first erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the capital Khartoum and quickly spread nationwide. He said social media had "shortened our attention spans", while other global crises such as the war in Gaza had received more international attention.
Fletcher called the current moment "a brutal period of indifference and apathy", and said some online misinformation had let some people feel that suffering on the other side of the world was not important. However, he argued that outlook was wrong. "You can't put a wall around millions of people who will flee from conflict and climate crisis," Fletcher said.
Fletcher told NPR that this year alone, he'd visited Gaza twice and Darfur twice, as well as going to the front lines in Ukraine and Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo — all within his first year in the job at the United Nations. "I get to see the worst of inhumanity, I'm afraid," he said.
"However, I also see the best of humanity and the people who are out there responding," he added. "We need that outpouring of generosity. I refuse to believe that people have lost that sense of human solidarity and generosity."
Copyright 2025 NPR
