Sudan enters the third anniversary of this war on 15 April under the shadow of mass civilian suffering. This moment should not be framed in terms of battlefield calculations or the rival claims of armed actors. It should be centered on the people of Sudan who have lived through bombardment, hunger, rape, displacement, detention, disappearance, and the collapse of basic protection.
A war measured in civilian loss
Three years on, Sudan is enduring the largest displacement crisis in the world and one of the gravest humanitarian emergencies anywhere. The World Health Organization reported in January 2026 that 13.6 million people were displaced, more than 20 million needed health assistance, 21 million needed food, and 33.7 million people would require humanitarian aid in 2026.
The crisis is deepening while the response remains dangerously underfunded. UN reporting from 5 April 2026 warned that the 2026 Humanitarian Response Plan was only 16 percent funded, even as needs continued to rise.
These figures can seem distant until they are understood for what they represent: uprooted families, children pushed out of school, clinics without medicine, and mothers trying to protect their children in places never meant to shelter human life.
A victim-centered account of this war must begin with one simple truth: civilians have not only been trapped by the conflict; they have also been directly targeted by it.
In its 7 April 2026 memorandum to the Sudan Conference in Berlin, the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies warned that what began as an armed power struggle has evolved into widespread and systematic violence against civilians and the foundations of civilian life.
Drawing on field reports from Greater Kordofan and El Fasher, the memorandum documented extrajudicial killings, forced displacement, widespread sexual violence, deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure through aerial bombardment and drone strikes, systematic looting, and the destruction of livelihoods. It also stressed that women, children, and persons with disabilities have been disproportionately exposed to violence and exploitation.
These findings are consistent with ACJPS’ earlier work. In its report on the human rights situation in Sudan from April to June 2025, ACJPS documented airstrikes on residential areas, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, attacks on camps for internally displaced people, and worsening humanitarian conditions across Darfur, River Nile, Al-Jazeera, and northern states.
This continuity matters. It shows that abuses against civilians are not isolated or accidental. They have become a defining feature of the war itself.
The destruction of Sudan’s health system reveals the human cost with brutal clarity. According to the WHO update on 1,000 days of war, more than one-third of health facilities in the country remain non-functional.
Since the war began in April 2023, the WHO has verified 201 attacks on health care, resulting in 1,858 deaths and 490 injuries. That means childbirth without skilled care, trauma without surgery, outbreaks without surveillance, and chronic illness without treatment.
People are not only dying from bombs and bullets. They are also dying because ambulances cannot move, oxygen runs out, vaccines do not arrive, and disease spreads through overcrowded sites of displacement.
WHO has also reported cholera across all 18 states, alongside the wider spread of dengue and malaria, as sanitation, immunization, and routine care systems break down. Hunger, disease, and deprivation are not secondary consequences to be dealt with later. Millions of Sudanese are now on the front lines.
This anniversary should force a reckoning with the language often used by international actors. References to “both sides” may sound balanced, but they can flatten responsibility and erase the civilian experience.
A serious response to Sudan must ask different questions: Which communities are under attack today? Which roads are blocked to fleeing families? Which hospitals and camps are no longer safe? Which detainees have disappeared? Which survivors of sexual violence still have no access to care or justice?
A victim-centered approach does not begin with military parity. It begins with protection, dignity, accountability, and the urgent needs of those who have borne the costs of this war.
The people still holding Sudan together
This anniversary must also acknowledge the Sudanese civilians and local responders who have sustained life in impossible conditions. Across the country, emergency response rooms, volunteer networks, health workers, women-led groups, and displaced communities have shared food, carried the wounded, documented abuses, and built fragile systems of mutual aid where state institutions have collapsed.
Yet they continue to operate while the international response falls far short of what the crisis demands. The United Nations spotlight on Sudan says the humanitarian community is seeking $2.9 billion to reach more than 20 million people inside Sudan, while a separate regional appeal seeks $1.6 billion to support 5.9 million refugees and host community members in neighboring countries.
These appeals are not acts of charity. They are the minimum required to prevent a deeper descent into famine, disease, regional instability, and irreversible social ruin.
Calls to action
On this third anniversary, the message is clear: Sudanese civilians are not collateral damage in a power struggle. They are rights-holders entitled to protection, humanitarian access, medical care, refuge, truth, and justice.
The international response urged by human rights advocates should move beyond ritual statements of concern. It should press for an immediate end to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, unrestricted humanitarian access across conflict lines and borders, stronger support for local responders, protection for refugees and displaced people, and credible accountability for war crimes and other grave abuses committed by all parties.
If this anniversary is remembered only through the movement of frontlines or the calculations of external powers, it will deepen the betrayal of Sudan’s people. It should instead be used to honor victims, amplify the testimony of survivors, and insist that Sudanese life is not negotiable.
After three years of war, that is the minimum that justice and humanity require.
By: The Executive Director,
African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS)