Sudan: A two-year crisis through the lens of a photojournalist
Text by Giles Clarke
Sudan has been embroiled in conflict for more than two years, with civilians enduring untold suffering. Fighting between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces broke out in the centre of Khartoum on 15 April 2023 and quickly spiraled into carnage. With an estimated 150,000 people dead and some 12 million displaced, the conflict has paralysed Africa’s third-largest country. A catastrophic famine is ravaging the more remote areas, while a nightmare of sexual violence persists for women and girls across the country.
Freelance photojournalist Giles Clarke documented the scale of the war’s brutality, away from the fighting in Khartoum, focusing on the mass displacement and the effects of the two-year war on civilians.
He explained: “My focus here is on the plight of displaced civilians, particularly women, and their daily struggle. I have spent the past 15 years photographing the impact of conflict, environmental damage and social injustices on civilian populations worldwide. What I am witnessing in Sudan today is among the most distressing.”
Many who fled the fighting in 2023 left their homes in the Khartoum and Wad Madani Regions, often on foot and with little more than the clothes they were wearing. Walking primarily during the night, some IDPs told the photographer they had walked for a week to reach Kassala, where host families hastily built settlements, and where former schools housed the massive influx of people towards the end of 2023.
“My first impressions of the mass displacement began in the coastal city of Port Sudan, where sprawling camps in the city’s outskirts and university buildings are bulging with women and children who fled Khartoum. From there, I moved quickly south to the Kassala and Gedaref Regions - the epicentre of the displacement crisis, and where I would base myself for a month in early 2025.”
Says Giles: “This former bus station was one of the first places I visited in Gedaref. As we drove in from a distance, it appeared as a low multistorey building with coloured wafting fabric swaying gently in the late afternoon breeze. As we got closer, scores of children began running towards us from every direction, from behind crude stalls selling snacks and from the building’s lower, darker floors. They seemed to appear from everywhere. Within about 30 seconds I stood beside the walkway leading to the upper floors. I made my way up to the first floor, where I was immediately confronted with the partitioned labyrinth of fabric cubicles, stretching some 300 yards. It was then that I realized it was home to hundreds of mostly women and children sat on straw floor mats whiling away the last light of the day. I was told that in a couple of hours, when many would return to the site, some 6,000 people would jostle for a part of the floor and go to sleep. I was told that they had all fled the fighting in Khartoum, Wad Madani and Sanner Regions, and this was now their home.”
“I saw hospitals resembling dilapidated construction sites, with open walls and glassless windows. ‘We have no supplies,’ said one nurse to me, in a medical centre in New Halfa. Throughout Sudan, this lack of life-saving essentials and rising ill-health are killing the young, old and vulnerable. The healthcare system has collapsed, and disease outbreaks, especially around the rainy seasons, are ominous clouds of yet more desperation to come. When I visited the sand-swept, blistering hot camps for internally displaced people, I saw hopelessness and despair on levels I've not seen before. Peace will help them return to their homes, but for many, their lives have been shattered forever. And I dread thinking about what I would see in Darfur today.”
Women and prolonged displacement
A pervasive, entrenched gender inequality has created catastrophic conditions for women and girls. Now put a war on top of that. We know the horror stories of what happened in Khartoum and the women escaping, but I wanted to see how they dealt with this prolonged displacement.
The trauma from the past two years runs deep. Sometimes I was with them all laughing; other times there would be someone in tears in a corner. They all want the war to end so they can return to their lives. A lot of them have lost their children. Families have been split. Their husbands are still in Khartoum, protecting whatever house they had before.
A young doctor finds purpose in displacement
In Kassala, I met 26-year-old Dr. Tayseer, who was forced to flee her home in April 2023 in Khartoum, carrying only her phone. She and her family headed for Kassala, where she knew she could continue her final year of medical studies. They travelled by bus, rickshaw and on foot, dodging RSF checkpoints and all-out street battles as they fled. A week later the family made it to Kassala and were led to a former high school, where they live today.
As Dr. Tayseer told me her harrowing story (in near-perfect English) in the privacy of one of the school’s classrooms, other displaced girls and women started to wander in. Some women began asking questions, and soon they too shared their stories.
“I fled with nothing more than my phone and negotiated my way through very dangerous checkpoints where a lot of women and young men were taken; it was terrifying,” said Dr. Tayseer. But I made it and was one of the lucky ones. Now I am a fully qualified doctor, displaced and living in a school. But I am alive, and I help others living at the school with trauma and other medical issues. I have found my purpose.”
I am 22 years old and feel like my life is over
“Before the war I had dreams – I wanted to graduate, build a career and make my family proud. But war doesn’t care about dreams. The war didn’t just steal my home; it stole my future,” said Samira, 22, a university student from Khartoum, who also lives on the school grounds. She fled Khartoum with her family on the eighth day of the war.
Girls are among more than 17 million children who are out of school, with hundreds of schools across the country serving as shelters for displaced people.
“I had spent years working hard, dreaming of a better life, and now… I am another displaced girl with nothing to look forward to,” lamented Samira.
Besides her shattered dreams, she had to brace herself for the worst in an atmosphere of violence. She says the city was unrecognizable: streets filled with dead bodies and the sound of gunfire echoing everywhere.
“I wasn’t just running for my life but for my dignity. I had heard what happened to girls like me at the hands of the soldiers. At every checkpoint we passed I held my breath, praying they wouldn’t stop us, praying they wouldn’t take me.”
The war followed us like a shadow
Afaf, 36, was photographed in Kassala, where she now lives in the abandoned school with Dr. Tayseer and some 1,500 other people. Afaf fled Khartoum in May 2023. “Everything collapsed when the war started,” she said, recounting her gruelling journey to safety.
“I first fled to Abu Quta in Aj Jazirah State, but danger followed. At every checkpoint, soldiers stopped us, questioning why I was travelling alone with children … at one checkpoint a soldier stared at my eldest son for too long. I feared they would take him. I held his hand so tightly that it hurt. I kept praying, ‘Please, let us pass. Please, don’t take my child.’ For two months we kept moving – to Al-Hasahisa, Wad Madani and Sennar. The war followed us like a shadow.”
“Reporting this war is complicated due to the many restrictions, access and permits needed to visit the country, especially the most affected regions, where famine conditions are worsening. Sadly, many of these restrictions have severely affected the humanitarian response mechanism, leaving aid organizations bereft of fully qualified staff and struggling with consistently delivering humanitarian aid. These bureaucratic blocks and checkpoints are hindering food and critical health supplies from reaching mothers and children in hospitals nationwide. At a time when it is impossible to find work or cash for many millions of the displaced, the need to help these people increases exponentially. A country at war and a country badly wounded is exceptionally complicated, but more needs to be done from within to support a very real and dire humanitarian crisis."
When the war broke out in Sudan two years ago, Fatima Alabbas, a UN volunteer, became one of the millions caught in the crossfire.
Displaced, widowed and stigmatized
Home for Yosra is now just a few floor mats in the former bus station in Gedaref, with no privacy. She said the lack of food and health support makes daily life difficult; when food arrives at the settlement, there's never enough. Yosra left almost everything behind when she fled, meaning she has no papers to prove she was married. She must now contend with the stigma of being seen as a mother who had children out of wedlock and feeling like a societal outcast. In a shelter that houses some 5,000 displaced people, this makes her more vulnerable to abuse.
For Yosra and other women across Sudan, displacement is just one aspect of the nightmare of the country’s two-year war. More than 12 million women and girls and an increasing number of men and boys are at risk of gender-based violence – an 80 per cent increase from the previous year.
Treating those with trauma
Unvaccinated and undernourished newborn children and those under age 5 are particularly susceptible to illness. Recent aid cuts are severely affecting an already underfunded humanitarian crisis. In March, the Under-Secretary-General (USG) for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, released US$22 million through the UN Emergency Fund (CERF) to provide life-saving support to the most vulnerable people. However, access challenges make it harder for humanitarians to deliver aid.
Attacks on critical civilian infrastructure
Drone attacks continue on infrastructure and power grids. In April 2025, a drone severely damaged a power plant near Port Sudan, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power and communications for days or weeks in the more remote regions.
Glimmers of hope: Building resilience and self-reliance
“What surprised me about visiting these remote rural areas in the south-east of the country was how fertile the land and well-irrigated some areas were. It helps that there are three tributary rivers of the Nile in Sudan and relatively large areas with unique microclimates of more consistent rainfall and abundant harvest. In peacetime, producing and distributing all this produce would be significantly easier due to access and consistent buyers at busy markets. I can’t imagine how many livelihoods in the Khartoum markets were affected after April 2023, as millions of people fled, leaving many parts of the city empty or under severe blockade.”
The scale of Sudan’s humanitarian crisis makes it vital to help Sudan’s people support themselves. Whether that’s through assisting farmers to grow crops, helping small businesses keep the economy afloat, or providing life-saving medicine for HIV and tuberculosis, UNDP and partners run projects across Sudan to boost resilience and reduce people’s dependence on aid.