Every day, the Victoria Community Center (VCC) welcomes and supports people from
countries affected by crises that have been at the top of our newspapers for a long time.
Sudan, however, is not one of them. The country has been at war for three years and is
experiencing one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the world, according to major
NGOs such as MSF, Intersos, and Amnesty International. Yet the world is looking elsewhere.
In May alone (2026), Sudanese nationals accounted for 45% of the people visiting our
center. In Greece more broadly, they are the fourth-largest group of asylum seekers,
surpassing groups such as Syrians and Palestinians. UNHCR data also show that arrivals in
Crete increased more than sixfold in 2024 compared to 2023.

To understand the current war in Sudan, it is important to look at the political crisis that
followed the fall of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. After 30 years of dictatorship, Sudan was
supposed to move towards democratic rule. However, the military remained powerful, with
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan leading the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Mohamed Hamdan
Dagalo (Hemedti) controlling the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In 2021,
Burhan carried out another coup, ending the democratic transition. A new agreement was
reached in December 2022 to establish civilian rule and, most importantly, to integrate the
RSF into the regular army. This created a major conflict between Burhan and Dagalo. While
Burhan wanted the RSF to be integrated within two years, Dagalo demanded at least ten
years. Integrating the RSF would have significantly reduced Dagalo’s independent military
power. What initially appeared to be a dispute between two centers of power quickly
escalated into open war. On 13 April 2023, RSF units entered the capital, Khartoum,
claiming they were merely repositioning personnel and assets. The SAF denounced the
deployment as illegal, and on 15 April fighting broke out.

The scale of the conflict has had devastating consequences for the civilian population. In
three years, 11 million people have been forced to flee their homes and are now internally
displaced, often without access to food, clean water, or safe shelter, making Sudan the
world’s largest displacement crisis. Another 1.8 million people have left the country in search
of protection. This violence is compounded by a severe food crisis. Fighting has destroyed
crops, disrupted agricultural activities and hindered trade and the distribution of humanitarian
aid. The situation has been made even more dangerous by the war in the Middle East, which
has disrupted humanitarian organisations’supply chains, forcing them to use more expensive
and time-consuming routes and driving up the cost of food, fuel and fertilisers. 26.4 million
people are experiencing acute food insecurity, and famine has officially been declared in
several areas of the country. Women and girls are paying an additional price, facing rape,
sexual slavery and other forms of gender-based violence.

More than three years after the war began, the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen while
much of the international community remains focused on other conflicts.

Why is no one talking about it?

Public perception does not reflect this reality. The media often cover conflicts according to
their immediate dramatic impact, making a conflict that has lasted for years appear less
important even as its consequences worsen. In addition, geopolitical interests shape media attention                                                                                            towards regions where major powers have a direct stake, indeed Europe does not face direct economic                                                                                 or commercial consequences although, as we will see, there are
indirect ones. Geographical and cultural proximity influences how easily Western audiences
identify with victims. In the case of Sudan, the profound humanitarian crisis taking place can
appear as a distant and chaotic conflict between warlords that is difficult to explain in a few seconds.

Let us compare two contemporary tragedies: Gaza and Sudan. Both involve enormous
numbers of civilian casualties, mass displacement and allegations of war crimes. Yet the
disparity in media coverage and the mobilisation of Western public opinion is striking. The
explanation does not lie in the severity of the situation, but rather in the fact that European
citizens feel a direct sense of responsibility towards Gaza that they do not feel towards the
fighting in Sudan. The public attention directed predominantly at Gaza is also due to an
infrastructural factor: Gaza is hyper-connected and saturated with real-time images, while
Sudan suffers from telecommunications blackouts and almost impossible access for the
international press. There is also an implicit hierarchy of suffering, whereby violence on the
African continent is still too often normalised as a structural feature of the landscape rather
than treated as an event requiring an immediate moral response.

Behind the lack of media attention, there is almost always a lack of funding. And behind the
lack of funding are concrete political choices. This is exacerbated by the collapse of
humanitarian funding. The dismantling of USAID in March 2025 removed the world’s largest
donor from the international humanitarian response system. Cuts to development assistance
by OECD countries, amounting to $43 billion in 2025 alone, have disproportionately affected
contexts with less political influence and less capacity to put pressure on donor
governments. Less funding means fewer interventions, fewer staff on the ground, less data
being collected and therefore even less visibility for these crises. In Sudan, the closure of
programmes that were already underway has left populations without support they depended
on to survive. Every programme that closes allows already chronic crises to become even
more entrenched, without making the news: a self-perpetuating cycle.

Where is the international community?

Beyond the lack of public attention, there was an even earlier failure to provide a political
response proportionate to the gravity of the situation (each one reinforcing the lack of
response in the other). The UN Security Council is a clear example: every permanent
member has a concrete interest to protect in Sudan, making paralysis almost structural.
Russia has exercised the most explicit veto. In November 2024, it blocked a resolution
calling for a ceasefire and the protection of civilians, invoking Sudanese sovereignty. Behind
this position lie very concrete interests: through the Wagner Group, now renamed Africa
Corps, Moscow controls gold-mining and smuggling networks in Darfur and the Blue Nile,
obtained in exchange for military support. Sudanese gold, moreover, helps the Kremlin
circumvent sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine. China has used its veto less frequently on this specific issue,                                                                        but its doctrine of non-interference, historically linked to its oil investments,                                                                                                                          makes it reluctant to support resolutions perceived as “intrusive”.
The United States, the United Kingdom, and France do not have comparable direct
economic interests, but their actions are constrained by a third factor: their economic and                                                                                                    military relationship with the United Arab Emirates, the main sponsor of the RSF, motivated
by control over gold and regional influence over ports.
The result is a Security Council in which every permanent member has either a local client to
protect or an economic interest to safeguard, and no one is willing to pay the diplomatic price
of a genuinely coercive resolution. 

Europe only looks at Africa when Africa reaches Europe

Europe has a structural problem in the way it looks at Africa: it tends to notice Africa only
when Africa reaches Europe. As long as a crisis remains confined to its continent of origin,
we see it as a distant event, worthy of little more than a newspaper headline. We only truly
engage with it when its effects cross the Mediterranean.
Yet at the Victoria Community Center, we are already seeing the consequences of this war
every day. Young Sudanese people arrive in Athens with little or nothing, sometimes finding
themselves sleeping in parks or on the streets. For them, coming to the Center means
having someone to talk to and spending a few hours in a safe place, away from the street.
Often, women with children do not want to leave the Women & Kids Space because they do
not know where they will sleep that night. These moments show how, for people who have
been forced to flee their country, reaching a safe place does not necessarily mean finding a
home or feeling safe. Sometimes, simply having somewhere to sit, rest and feel welcomed
can make a difference.
When almost half of the people accessing our center’s services come from Sudan, the
conflict is no longer a distant crisis. It is here in Athens and it is present in the lives of the
people we meet every day.
Three years after the war began, Sudan continues to be one of the world’s most severe
humanitarian emergencies.

The least we can do is make sure it does not remain invisible

Written by Agnese Subrizi (Intern, The Social Factory – Athens)