This war has displaced more than 10 million people. Here’s why you haven’t heard about it

For Yasir El Hassan, a good night’s sleep is rare.

The Sydney-based university student has struggled to sleep for the past 18 months, preoccupied with worries for family members who have been displaced by war in his native Sudan.

“We don’t know if tomorrow we’re going to get a phone call that something horrible has happened to one of our loved ones or family,” El Hassan says.

The 19-year-old first moved to Australia in 2011 with his mother, but much of their family remains in the heart of what are calling the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

While the conflict is never far from El Hassan’s mind, many Australians have never heard of it.

A man and a woman in the front seat of a car

Yasir El Hassan and his mum Dr Ahlam Ibraheem are spreading awareness of the war in Sudan and supporting their community in Sydney. Source: Supplied

Sudan’s forgotten war

There has been no shortage of headlines covering international conflicts recently, including , Ukraine .

But little has been reported locally on the devastating conflict that broke out in Sudan in April 2023, and has since torn apart the northeast African country, forcibly displacing more than 10 million people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported in May that the country is facing imminent famine, with 3.6 million children “acutely malnourished” of a total 18 million people experiencing acute hunger.

El Hassan says the pain he feels for his homeland is amplified by the lack of understanding in Australia of the crisis.

“It feels like Sudan is just being forgotten about — not even forgotten about because no one actually knows to begin with,” he says.

The United Nations says Sudan has “the largest internally displaced population ever reported.” Source: SBS News

How did the war in Sudan start?

From 1989 to 2019, Sudan, which lies on Egypt’s southern border, was ruled by a dictator named Omar al-Bashir. In April 2019, he was thrown out of office in — the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) teamed up with paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to oust al-Bashir, bringing his three-decade reign to an end.

The military forces took control of the government and violently cracked down on pro-democracy protesters.

In response to international condemnation, the SAF and the RSF agreed to share power with civilian leaders and transition the country of almost 50 million people to a civilian-led democracy.

Despite in October 2021 in which the military leaders temporarily seized control once more, the dream of a civilian-led democracy was still alive until 2023.

But in April 2023, tensions between the head of the SAF, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the leader of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, boiled over, leading to the outbreak of one of Africa’s most explosive conflicts in living memory.

While information about casualties is scarce, the United Nations estimates that tens of thousands of people have been killed in the power struggle over the past 18 months.

The human toll of civil war

El Hassan’s mother, Dr Ahlam Ibraheem, has been watching developments in Sudan with bated breath.

“It is a war between military and paramilitary and who’s the victim? It’s the people there, the innocent people,” she says.

Two women wearing headscarves and standing outside smiling and looking towards the camera

Fleeing violence in Sudan, Dr Ibraheem’s mother Omelnsar (right) moved to Australia last year. Source: Supplied

Ibraheem’s brothers and elderly mother have been displaced by the war; her mother, Omelnsar, escaped through Egypt in the first months of the conflict and eventually joined Ibraheem in Australia.

Her brother Omer remains in Sudan and has been directly affected by the violence: He sustained a devastating head injury at the hands of an RSF militant, Ibraheem says, which caused the loss of his vision.

“It’s very hard to communicate … He was hit in his head. He lost his vision,” she tells SBS News.

“His son sent us a message [saying] ‘Dad lost his vision’, and we couldn’t communicate with them for a whole month. We didn’t know what happened. Was he shot by a gun? It was a very hard time.”

The inside of a home which has been burnt and destroyed.

Yasir and Ahman’s family home in Khartoum was destroyed in the conflict. Source: Supplied

Residential neighbourhoods in Sudan have become battlefields — their family house in the capital Khartoum was destroyed late last year amid an outbreak of fighting between the warring factions.

El Hassan says it feels like his home is gone forever.

“Seeing places you grew up in and visited and just hold so [many] memories in just being destroyed, you start to think that it’s kind of gone forever,” he says.

“Hopefully, in the future, Sudan will be rebuilt, and that’s the best outcome we can hope for, but it’s just not going to be the same.”

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Why do we rarely hear about the Sudan crisis in Australia?

The complexity and severity of the crisis make reporting a challenge for media and humanitarian agencies.

Emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Technology Sydney, Andrew Jakubowicz, says war zones such as those in Sudan are difficult for Australian media to cover and often considered a low priority.

“You need resources and assets on the ground in those places, and that’s both expensive and dangerous. But also, there’s that axiom in media studies that one person killed in your local area is as important, or probably more important than 100,000 people killed on the other side of the world,” Jakubowicz says.

A man wearing glasses holding his fist to his chin and looking at the camera

Professor Andrew Jakubowicz is an expert in ethnic diversity issues and media studies. Source: Supplied

“There’s also another factor that you can’t rule out, which is [that] exposing yourself to these narratives also generates an enormous sense of frustration.”

Audiences are more likely to disengage with stories if they feel powerless to help, he explained.

It’s a source of frustration for many in Australia’s Sudanese community, including Ibraheem.

“We work hard here and we’re paying tax, and we [do] see not even a single word about what’s happening back in our country — no support at all,” she says.

Despite the lack of coverage, there are organisations in Australia and abroad, such as the Doctors Humanity Aid Charity Organization and UNHCHR’s Sudan Emergency appeal, trying to lift awareness of the conflict and raise funds for the Sudanese community.

As well as financially supporting her displaced relatives, Ibraheem founded a not-for-profit organisation, the Sudanese Australian Health and Wellbeing Association, in response to the crisis.

“We are trying to empower our community by improving health awareness to reduce the stress … And also for the newly-arrived people. After the war, we want to try to engage the new people [in] the Australian community,” she says.

A group of women standing near a sign in a room

Dr Ahlam Ibraheem’s organisation provides culturally aware support for Sudanese Australians and refugees from the conflict. Source: Supplied

Founder and Chair of the African Australian Advocacy Centre, Noël Zihabamwe, says the lack of coverage of African issues is also partly due to a perpetuation of .

“Big media here, they tend to show the negative image. [But] once we start demonstrating the positives for African Australians — the contributions we’re making here — that image of Africans, not only Africans [in Australia] but also Africans in Africa, will change,” Zihabamwe says.

With the federal government’s increased focus on , Jakubowicz says better coverage of issues that affect migrant and refugee communities is key to improving tensions in the community.

“The lack of attention to stories that are relevant to many [communites], particularly refugee communities, doesn’t help in their sense of social inclusion,” he says.

“If there was more about the diversity of Australia and the important elements in the lives of the people who have arrived, then that sense of understanding difference — what we’d call intercultural communication — would be greatly improved.”

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