15 million children require humanitarian support in Sudan,.but it's not really talked about

[TheTallgiraffe]

15 million children require humanitarian support in Sudan.Famine has been declared in 10 locations in Sudan, 12.4 million people have had to flee their homes, 150 000 people have died.

Obviously it's not a competition, but
this conflict doesn't get half as much attention on MN as the Gaza conflict. I wonder why this is?

www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjel2nn22z9o

news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1162226

news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160526

Sudan: 15 million children require humanitarian assistance after two years of war

The number of children in need of humanitarian assistance in Sudan has doubled as the war between rival militaries enters a third year on Tuesday.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1162226

(Yes I posted this earlier in News, but it only got two replies.)

Exactly. The idea that we have to be involved with Israel Palestine because of the minuscle volume of arms deals with Israel is BS but wheeled out all the time. As is the argument about empire. As if Britain wasn't a major imperial power across Africa.

I think it’s ‘popular’ to talk about/have an opinion about because it’s so heavily covered by the press. It’s normal for people to focus on political events that dominate the news. A totally different (non-political) example but when the titanic sub went missing, there was pretty much live coverage for people to watch and everyone had a view. Were we all titanic/sub enthusiasts? Probably not, but we were given a story to follow and we did.

So I guess I understand why people are so invested. The question is why is it seen as such a ‘popular’ news story for the media to cover. I guess it involves our government plus Trump (who I think is always going to be a popular news item because of his sound bites). It’s emotive which ‘sells’. Then there’s the fear that it’s because the Western media want to demonise Israel. This is a perspective I’m still trying to read into. If anyone has any useful sources, that would be helpful!

15 million ? That’s a lot of people for a country of somewhere between 70 and 90 million ( that’s us) to take on…..

That’s great you’re so passionate about this. I’m curious - why didn’t you list the top ten actions you’ve taken on this in your OP? Just quickly jot them down now.

All I’ve done is donate to UNICEF. But I’m not as across the issues as you are.

I don’t know how people aren’t embarrassed to trot out the “No Jews, no news” line when discussing mass killings and starvation. It’s so indicative of not seeing Palestinians as human beings.

It’s not that crazy. Anti-Jewish racism (blending into eliminationism at the extremes) is ubiquitous across the Middle East and much of the Muslim world. That fuels the Gaza framing in two ways: it feeds via UN/institutional channels into a focus on Israeli sins that is unique and obsessive (number of condemnatory votes in UNHCR and UNGA exceeds those for all other countries in the world combined), and it provides the motivation of neighbouring Arab states to bolster the Palestinian identity as a political wedge (plus the USSR for slightly different reasons). So that’s the context Western leftists wander into, many of them unaware. And the Western left has developed an explicitly racist moral frame over the past few decades where whiteness and white colonialism and oppression is pretty much the gravest sin (explicitly racist, I say, because other colonialisms and oppressions are largely given a pass and because it’s explicitly framed in anti-white terms). And the Jews, having been slaughtered in the 20th C for being not white enough are now deliciously white in the eyes of progressives always keen on a bogeyman and ever flattening complex issues into moral black and white.

Obviously that’s not the whole story, but it’s a very large part of it. If Israelis were an Arab Muslim state, do you really think Israel/Gaza would be the totemic issue it is across the Arab world and the progressive left? It can’t all be ascribed to which states the UK is an ally to. We’re an ally to Saudi and UAE and many others, but that doesn’t trigger the same response.

It’s obviously reductive and in many cases unfair.

But there is something that needs to be explained, when Gaza provokes 10x the outrage of Saudi and UAE in Yemen and Sudan, even though the civilian death tolls of the latter are higher and all three powers (Saudi/UAE/Israel) are UK military allies.

I don’t actually think it’s because the Western left consider Yemenis and Sudanese not to be humans.

It’s in large part becuase Israel’s presence in the area (or at all) is seen as fundamentally illegitimate by many or most of those who are outraged.

And that, plainly speaking, is because Israel is Jewish.

From an Arab or Muslim perspective (not all think this, of course) they are Muslim lands. River to the sea. Jewishness is the wound. From the progressive left it’s because they are (ditto, not all think this) European settler colonialists. That’s ethnicity (ie, Jewishness).

An outrage at world conflict that turned on the ‘humanness’ of the victims would look quite different. Gazans are no less or more human than Yemeni, Sudanese, Saudis, Israelis, Druze, Brits, Uyghurs or anyone else. But Gaza has massive extra salience in the Arab world and in the West, yes, because Jews.

I think the poster is saying they dont care about what happens to their own countries so why should we?
I tend to agree

Exactly @GeneralPeter I'd be more embarassed not to see it @StayTrueToo

But isn’t most people’s ’gateway’ to this conflict the media? So is it the media that is ‘to blame’ for perpetuating this issue? Because I don’t blame people for seeing images or reading reports and having an issue with some of the Israeli government’s actions. I don’t believe (but of course don’t know as fact) that the people I’ve spoken to about Israel’s actions aren’t questioning Israel’s statehood or existence. Just their govt./military’s actions and some of the things their govt. has said.

And, back to the media side of things, don’t factors like Trump and Starmer making statements make it more likely to be in the news . I’m sure Trump statements are widely read because of the usual sound bites and Starmer is our PM so newsworthy. Both the UK and US are Israeli allies so it would seem strange for them to not talk about it and to also overwhelmingly think Israel shouldn’t exist.

I’m not asserting any of the above as fact. I’m just trying to wrap my head around what you’ve suggested. Because the outrage in response to some of the news stories is justified - it’s not like Israel (govt and military) have acted totally ‘innocently’ in this war. So is it then just the media’s fixation on telling this stuff and the media is massively antisemitic?

Any sources you have in support of this argument would be really helpful as it’s a perspective I’m trying to get a better understanding of.

For all those posters criticising others for not talking about Sudan but only Gaza, why haven’t you started many threads about it (not just goady ones like this), are you posting details on your social media etc to increase awareness?

A lot of what we talk about about is impacted by what is shown in the news/media. There can be an horrendous natural disaster and for days there is 24/7 news coverage, but then something awful happens elsewhere and that first natural disaster is forgotten about. Even Gaza and Ukraine can get bumped off the news schedule for a day or too.

I can also remember criticism about the constant coverage of the war in Ukraine when that started and the criticism of why we were specifically offering homes and support for Ukrainian families and not people involved in other conflicts.

Sadly, the many conflicts that happen in many parts of Africa are constant so will only get sporadic news coverage

Blimey. So if a person lives under a dictatorship that means they don’t care what happens in their country and aren’t worth caring about? Men, women and children alike? Good grief!

I think culturally we are very removed from most African countries, we don't have a history of following their political upheavals and let's be honest, there seems to be a lot if you categorise Africa under one heading.

My colleague and friend is Sudanese, we have known each other about a year and it's embarrassing how little I knew about her country and culture. I have seen footage of her ransacked family home and destroyed street which they just regained access to after the recent liberation of Khartoum. It was very real to see her grief. She talks regularly about the humanitarian crisis, so I'm possibly more in the loop than most. But truthfully I still don't really understand the complexity either of the recent situation or the historic conflicts. There are also so many social things I find hard to understand like different tribes and their interactions and conflicts. It's not like you can just read a few articles and understand what's going on.

But yes I agree we should be trying harder to understand and more importantly we should be trying to help out these vulnerable victims of war, regardless of who or where they are. More discussion can only lead to more support.