Report: SalaaMedia
Citizens in the Darfur region suffer from a severe shortage of food and basic materials, as well as a lack of necessary life-saving medicines, which has led to a noticeable increase in the deaths of mothers and pregnant women. Despite this, there is a loss of security and stability as a result of the violent fighting in the city of El Fasher between the armed forces and the joint force on the one hand, and the Rapid Support Forces on the other hand. The air strikes also worsened the conditions in areas where clashes had stopped, or which were under the control of the Rapid Support.
These conditions mask a growing humanitarian crisis, as displaced people and the communities hosting them suffer from severe food shortages, and women and children are unable to obtain necessary health care. Due to the disruption of the health system in the region. Regarding education, there is an estimated percentage of children who are not enrolled in school. Moreover, the rates of security incidents and disturbances have increased in areas not witnessing conflict.
This report summarizes the overall humanitarian disasters to which civilians in Darfur have been exposed as a result of the war and the armed forces’ warplane raids, especially calls from official authorities to close the crossings through which humanitarian aid flows. This resulted in disasters that put the people of Darfur in a spiral with almost no chance of survival. All these disasters surround the people of Darfur, and thus place huge responsibilities on the international and regional community. The most important of which is pressure to stop the war, in addition to the serious effort to provide humanitarian aid to save civilians from the danger of hunger, in addition to pressure for arrangements that preserve human life in the region from other dangers.
Famine disaster
Population affected by famine at catastrophic level (acute hunger) during the period from the beginning of the war until August 2024 AD
The numbers in the above table dealt with those falling under the “acute hunger stage” classification only, based on the United Nations interim classification report. Therefore, the total number of people classified as under acute hunger until August 2024 amounted to 464,000 individuals, or nearly half a million. During the period from August until the end of October 2024 AD. No accurate information or reports have been issued indicating an increase or decrease in the number of affected people falling under the classification of the acute hunger stage. However, warnings have been issued by UN human rights experts that 97% of internally displaced people, along with civilians remaining in their homes, face severe levels of hunger that threaten their lives. What is worth mentioning: The emergence of limited-impact efforts to provide aid to those affected in Darfur, under which the World Food Program has provided food aid to cover approximately 360,000 people in Darfur through the Adre border crossing since its reopening in August 2024. Accordingly, aid distribution operations were completed to more than 200,000 people in the Kirinike and Sirba areas of West Darfur state. In comparison, the gap between the numbers of those targeted for humanitarian aid and those who actually received aid amounts to about 160,000 people in the region.
Air strikes
Since the beginning of the war, air raids by warplanes of the armed forces have represented a terrifying concern for the citizens of the region, as civilian targets and civilian gatherings have always been the target of these raids under the pretext that they represent “social incubators” for the Rapid Support Forces. The raids varied in terms of the aircraft used, the ammunition and the times they occurred. There are raids in which explosive barrels are dropped by Antonov planes, which cause great destruction to communities in villages and cities, in addition to the high volume of human losses and the terror they cause to civilians. There are also raids carried out by combat aircraft (more…..).
Example for massive destruction cause by air strikes: Alkuma town: Altagyeer news paper
| Town/village | Number of strikes | Casualties |
| Milit, Milit, Kapkabia, Kuma | 31 | 79 dead, 225 wounded |
| Al Diein | 3 | 44 dead 62 wounded |
| Al Genena | 2 | 1 dead, 6 wounded |
Deaths of pregnant women
The amount of deaths that occur among pregnant women and children has become an issue that has been forgotten, as specialists estimated that the maternal mortality rate in Sudan in general rose from 6.7% before the war to 15% after the outbreak of the war, due to the collapse of the health system and the cessation of more than 80%. From hospitals and health centers. As a result, many of these women lost their lives during pregnancy. UN Women has estimated the number of pregnant women in Sudan at more than 160,000, and this percentage is considered large. In South Darfur alone, Doctors Without Borders recorded, in a report it described as shocking, the deaths of 46 pregnant women from January to August 2024, while maternal deaths in the camps for displaced people (Kalma, Atash, Derej and Majok) recorded about 87 cases. (For more, SalaaMedia report).
In the latest update, the Ministry of Health in Port Sudan held a meeting to advocate for the issue of maternal and child health on October 31, 2024, in the presence of a number of international organizations. The Minister of Health, Haitham Muhammad Ibrahim, reported that the maternal mortality rate reached 295 deaths per 100,000 births, while neonatal deaths reached 51 deaths per 1,000 children.
Restrictions on freedoms
The violations have evolved to include restrictions on freedoms by cutting off and blocking communications services and placing obstacles to the movement of citizens. SalaMedia was spotted in a previous report.
The reasons for the arrests by all warring parties were summarized as reasons for cooperation with the other party. In addition to limiting the freedom of movement of citizens between cities and villages, via the roads they usually take to escape death as a result of battles and air strikes. While searching for exits to cross to safer areas, fleeing civilians are exposed to armed robbery and pressure in front of checkpoints set up by the parties to the war.
Impact of communication network outages
Civilians in Darfur are suffering from a ban on using satellite Internet (Star-Link) after the communications service that was provided by national companies stopped since May 2024. This ban directly causes the cessation of banking and commercial transactions that were carried out through electronic applications, which contributed greatly to the economic movement in the region and enabled them to purchase their needs. Adding a limit of communication. The cessation of the services of national telecommunications companies and the reduction in alternative communications (Star-Link) increases and exacerbates the extent of the suffering, as the civilian population loses the means of obtaining financial transfers that enable them to meet their daily needs of food and medicine, even if they are limited.
Educational institutions stop
The education disaster appears, especially among children, as a forgotten event amid the focus on disasters such as famine, death by air raids, and others. As a result of the continuation of the war, the educational infrastructure in the region was destroyed, just like what happened to the health and other sectors. It is estimated that more than five million children will lose their opportunities for education, and about 100,000 students in higher education institutions have lost their right to education in the Darfur region, where 4,000 schools at all levels have stopped, including nomadic schools.
Limited local efforts
Local initiatives responded to the forgotten education crisis. Some international organizations sponsored the maintenance of a number of schools. Local initiatives were also launched in the city of El Geneina and individual initiatives were launched in North Darfur to educate children. In the latest update tracked by SalaaMedia about education in Darfur, all that was monitored about the educational situation in Darfur was the announcement by the Ministry of Education of the Civil Administration of South Darfur about the start of the new academic year 2024-2025 AD in the state’s schools. What emerges from the accumulation of violations monitored by SalaaMedia through reports on various topics, is that they are a series of violations that are almost applied to civilians in Darfur, targeting them directly. These violations do not fall on the warring parties, as much as all of these parties practice these violations – and for different reasons – on Defenseless civilians, as if the field of this war is the bodies of civilians and the environments in which they live. Whoever did not die from various firearms in confrontations or air raids was killed by famine and its diseases, and whoever was destined to survive these and those, all escape routes to safe shelters were closed to him. The numbers of those suffering from these crises due to the war are increasing every day. The observations that must be noted are that the conditions of civilians within the scope of the war in Darfur have gone beyond the stage of using them as human shields to what is more dangerous, which is the loss of the value of life for civilians. The death of a human being in Darfur by any means is no longer an issue that concerns the warring parties from near or far. The international and regional community is required more than ever to activate mechanisms to protect civilians in Darfur and the rest of Sudan.