One year on from the massacre, the international community is turning a blind eye to Sudan.

A year ago, satellite images showing the mass graves in El Fashir, captured from space, became a snapshot of a forgotten war – the one in Sudan. The capital of North Darfur was besieged for 18 months by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group which, since April 2023, has been vying for power with the Sudanese Armed Forces, commanded by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. When Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s RSF entered El Fashir, it was impossible to count the dead. Estimates were the only guide, and they were all horrifying: over 2,000 dead in the 24 hours following the rebels’ incursion, 6,000 in the following 48 hours, with 60 per cent of the population massacred. The rest was left to the testimonies of the survivors: torture, mutilation, sexual violence. The UN described it as a ‘genocide’ against the non-Arab population. Nevertheless, the war in Sudan remains far from the spotlight, failing to polarise public opinion as has happened in other cases. The conflict began just a few months before the one in Gaza, yet the death toll is unparalleled anywhere in the world: over 200,000 dead in three years, 14 million displaced, and 30 million people facing severe food insecurity.

And people continue to die – three days ago in al-Dibab, in West Kordofan, 84 civilians were killed by a drone strike – whilst international diplomacy remains paralysed. The so-called ‘Quad’, comprising the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, has never initiated negotiations, and a year on, Dagalo has not been subject to any new sanctions despite the crimes committed by his fighters. The Global Security Services Group, the UAE-based company that recruited the Colombian fighters involved in the El Fashir massacre, has not faced any sanctions; nor have the Emirates been called to account for the military support given to the RSF in breach of the arms embargo on Darfur. Instead, Abu Dhabi has nominated one of its diplomats, Lana Nusseibeh, as the new UN Secretary-General. Nusseibeh has consistently denied any Emirati involvement in Sudan.