Civilians Endure Crisis in Great Lakes, Horn of Africa Wars

M23 rebels in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The group has been accused of gross human rights abuses against civilians. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Political instability and conflicts in the Great Lakes, the Horn of Africa, Sudan, and South Sudan have led to massive displacements and civilian suffering, and because the whole region is in crisis, the civilian population has few places to find refuge.

In the Great Lakes, Africa faces its most severe political crisis in more than 20 years; the M23 crisis in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has displaced more than 3.7 million people—many of them for the second time.

Recently, researchers and humanitarian workers have reported at various forums that civilians caught in the middle of this conflict are facing a humanitarian crisis.

“We have faced unprecedented atrocities. There has been mass rape of women in Khartoum, apart from the abduction of girls to be sold as slaves in Darfur,” said Dr. Faiz Jamie, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Bahri-Sudan.

“The aim behind atrocities against the villagers is so that they can loot comfortably,” argues Jamie.

The conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began on April 15, 2023, after a breakdown in the transition to civilian rule, following the overthrow of long-time President Omar al-Bashir.

“RSF is now in control of the Darfur region. But the region is the most devastated as far as civilians are concerned. Genocidal activities were identified against the Masalit ethnic group, where people were buried alive, as documented by videos uploaded by the very perpetrators (the RSF),” said Jamie.

He said civilians are bearing the brunt of the conflict because the rationale behind the war is to drive them out of the cities and villages into settler-like camps.

For the last two years, the conflict has mainly been in the capital, Khartoum. But more recently, the fighters have spread to other towns and regions.

Attacks on civilians have been reported in ZamZam camp, Abu Shouk camp, Al Fasher, and North Darfur.

On April 25, the UN Human Rights Office said that it had listed at least 481 civilians killed in North Darfur since April 10 and that “the actual number is likely much higher.”

In the statement, UN rights chief Volker Turk said, “The suffering of the Sudanese people is hard to imagine, harder to comprehend, and simply impossible to accept.”

“Deliberately taking the life of a civilian or anyone not or no longer directly participating in hostilities is a war crime.”

The RSF is accused of deliberate assaults on medical facilities and the killing of nine Sudanese aid workers from Relief International.

Sudan INGO Forum, a coordination and representation body, added, “What is happening in ZamZam, Abu Shouk camp, and Al Fasher is not just a tragedy—it is an atrocity. Civilians are being starved, slaughtered, and prevented from fleeing. Aid workers and local volunteer responders are being hunted (down).”

Over 13 million had been internally displaced as of April 2025, and 3.3 million had fled to neighbouring countries, namely Chad, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.

 “Ending the suffering of Sudanese civilians requires regional and international pressure on the United Arab Emirates to stop arming and funding the RSF,” suggests Jamie.

Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations, said both sides are entrenched, with external backers.

“The United Arab Emirates (UAE) backs the RSF, while Egypt supports the SAF, which prolongs the conflict. These divisions led to the failure of the peace talks in Jeddah in late 2023 because of mutual distrust and competing regional interests,” he observed in an article titled A Nation Bleeds While The World Watches: The Tragedy In Sudan Must End.

Alex De Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and Research Professor at Tufts University, has studied the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region for close to 40 years. He said what is being witnessed in that region is a catastrophe on an even greater scale than earlier conflicts.

“All famines are man-made and, in general language, deliberate. Political decisions have triggered every famine. We have had deliberate starvation or reckless indifference to human life. That is what is happening in Darfur,” said De Waal.

According to De Waal, the conflict in Sudan is the biggest by magnitude, and the war in the Horn of Africa threatens what he describes as a mass mortality event in more than a generation.

“We have never before had a situation in which all the countries of this region are in the same kind of crisis at the same time,” he said.

“In the past, if we had a humanitarian emergency in South Sudan, people would move from there to Northern Sudan; if we had a crisis in Darfur, they could move to Chad or Khartoum; and in the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, many people from Tigray moved to Khartoum as refugees. Those things are not possible when the whole region is in crisis,” he added.

He suggested that an immediate response needs to be informed by an effort to address the political and economic causes of the conflicts in the Horn of Africa.

“It didn’t happen overnight. We need to call out the men. I repeat, men made these famines. And we need to look out for the economic breakdown preceding this. Sudan, for instance, will need an enormous bailout. Ethiopia is going to need some fundamental economic restructuring.”

The Horn of Africa faces a humanitarian crisis as some 90 million people are in danger of famine. War continues to rage in South Sudan and Sudan, while a fragile peace has taken hold in Ethiopia after the Tigray War of 2020–2022.

Observers have noted that the region’s borders, unlike those in the rest of Africa, are in flux, as secessionist movements have successfully given birth to new states in South Sudan and Eritrea and a de facto state in Somaliland.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Director of Columbia SIPA’s Kent Global Leadership Program on Conflict Resolution, said the Horn of Africa is a victim of geopolitics at the moment.

“Where every country is looked at through the prism of geopolitical competition. Ethiopia has connections with the West; it also has strong connections with China. And every country is looking at how it is going to position itself,” observes Guéhenno, a former UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping.

He has noted that the divisions among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America—in a way empower regional actors who may not necessarily want to support a peace process.

“So the division in the Security Council turns into the divisions in the regional divisions. And we see it certainly in the Horn, where you have different perspectives from different African countries, and you also have countries from the Gulf, which all have different interests. And so the situation is incredibly more complicated and, I would say, more fragmented,” notes Guéhenno.

The Gulf States stand accused of indulging in destabilising political patronage of African actors, creating perverse incentives that undermine the foundations of peace.

The burden of the conflicts in the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region countries like DRC, among others, is disproportionately borne by women and children.

In the East of the mineral-rich DRC, in North Kivu and South Kivu, fighting between Congolese security forces and militant groups led by M23 escalated, culminating in M23’s capture of Goma. The fight has forced thousands of people to flee, sometimes multiple times.

“They are living in difficult conditions, often in extreme vulnerability. The multiple frontlines and the use of heavy artillery have led to many casualties, including an increasing number of civilians,” said Francine Kongolo, the spokesperson of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

ICRC said from the beginning of February 2025, more than 1,400 weapon-wounded civilians had been treated at its surgical projects in the North and South Kivu provinces.

The United Nations Human Rights Office has documented more than 200 cases of rape and sexual violence in Eastern DRC since the start of the violence, some of which allegedly were perpetrated by M23.

“Reports from health facilities indicate a rise in rape cases, with children accounting for 30 percent of those treated,” the office said in a statement.

“As offensives intensify, more than 700,000 people, 41 percent of whom are school-aged children, have been displaced, and the number of casualties, including among children, is mounting at an alarming rate. A majority of cases remain unreported, and this may only be the tip of the iceberg.”

Meskerem Geset Techane, a human rights lawyer based in Ethiopia, has observed that the crisis in the Horn of Africa is a human rights crisis itself.

“Be it the food crisis or a peace crisis, it has taken a heavy toll on the protection of human rights across the region. We have seen the peace crisis in Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan. It has not only violated the right to peace itself but also a range of fundamental human rights,” said Techane.

Jackline Nasiwa, Executive Director of the Center for Inclusive Governance, Peace, and Justice, said people of South Sudan are tired and traumatised.

Assefaw Bariagaber, a professor of diplomacy and international affairs, said the readiness of these countries to amass such weapons without punishment from the international system is worrying.

“The availability of not only large amounts of armaments but also much more modern armaments, devastating armaments, needs to be checked; that is what has increased violence and civilian suffering. More than 150,000 people have lost their lives, and over 25 million have been displaced, including me,” he said.

There is a feeling that the institutions under the African Union and the leaders have not done what they should to protect the civilians from the disturbing increase in violence by the armed combatants.

Dr. Sabastiano Rwengabo, a Ugandan Political Scientist, suggested the need to pressure states to strengthen institutions so they can “bite,” including, where necessary, against states.

“It is because of some of these dishonesties and vested interests that member states don’t allow regional or continental bodies to act in a way that would prevent or reverse civilian victimisation in armed conflicts,” Rwengabo told IPS.

Last month, the DRC and Rwanda-backed M23 agreed in April to pause fighting as they work towards a broader peace deal.

Critics of the African Union processes said the truce wouldn’t have been possible if Qatar had not arranged a meeting between Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Felix Tshisekedi of the DRC.

In a diplomatic tone, Kagame did not attribute the truce to the Qatar meeting but to what he described as several efforts at the same time.

“You look at the whole continent, and you find many trouble spots in different areas. There are all kinds of efforts going on back and forth—succeeding in some places and not succeeding in others. These are some of the dynamics we are dealing with,” Kagame said.

Observers note that while regional and international engagements are ongoing, many of these conflicts remain unresolved, and the cycle of violence and displacement continues.

Humanitarian agencies warn that unless there is a concerted, coordinated global response—anchored in accountability, humanitarian access, and political will—the region could spiral further into instability.

As calls grow louder for the international community to take decisive action, the people of the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa continue to bear the brunt of inaction, with millions facing hunger, displacement, and violence every day.