Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Sudan’s devastating humanitarian crisis, upcoming elections in Singapore, and China’s trade relations in Southeast Asia.
‘We Simply Cannot Look Away’
Tuesday marked the two-year anniversary of what the United Nations says is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis: the Sudanese civil war. On April 15, 2023, conflict erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Since then, fighting has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 12 million others, and sparked a devastating famine across the African country. U.S. President Donald Trump’s cuts to foreign aid have exacerbated the suffering.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Sudan’s devastating humanitarian crisis, upcoming elections in Singapore, and China’s trade relations in Southeast Asia.
‘We Simply Cannot Look Away’
Tuesday marked the two-year anniversary of what the United Nations says is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis: the Sudanese civil war. On April 15, 2023, conflict erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Since then, fighting has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 12 million others, and sparked a devastating famine across the African country. U.S. President Donald Trump’s cuts to foreign aid have exacerbated the suffering.
The United Kingdom, the European Union, the African Union, France, and Germany convened a meeting in London on Tuesday to discuss ending the conflict and improving global relief efforts; the conference was also attended by foreign ministers and high-level representatives from 14 other countries, including the United States as well as from the League of Arab States and the United Nations.
The EU pledged around $592 million in aid for Sudan, with the United Kingdom announcing an additional $158 million. “We simply cannot look away,” British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in his opening statement. The international community must not “resign ourselves to inevitable conflict,” he said.
Noticeably absent from Tuesday’s conference, though, were Sudan’s two warring parties, neither of which were invited to attend. Instead, the African Union represented the continent’s interests, with AU envoy Bankole Adeoye saying, “There can be no military solution in Sudan, only an immediate, unconditional cessation of hostilities. This must be followed by an all-inclusive dialogue to end the war.”
The Sudanese army criticized the London talks for including Kenya and the United Arab Emirates, which Khartoum accuses of backing the RSF. Both Nairobi and Abu Dhabi deny these allegations.
Fighting across Sudan’s Darfur region has escalated in recent days. Over the weekend, the RSF claimed to have seized control of North Darfur’s Zamzam refugee camp after a four-day assault that left hundreds of people dead or injured, including civilians and medical aid workers. Zamzam and the nearby Abu Shouk camp, which together host some 700,000 people, are located near the city of El Fasher, the only remaining major city in Darfur that the RSF does not control.
Rights groups have documented targeted ethnic killings, mass displacement, and systematic rape across the Darfur region since the civil war began. According to Human Rights Watch, the RSF is responsible for much of these instances, leading several nonprofits and foreign governments, including the United States, to accuse the paramilitary group of committing genocide.
The Sudanese Armed Forces and its allies have also been credibly accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war, including torture and extrajudicial killings.
The news of the paramilitary’s gains also comes as the United Nations warns of sexual violence, including rape, being used as a weapon of war in Sudan. According to Anna Mutavati, the regional director of U.N. Women, demand for lifesaving support for sexual violence survivors has increased by nearly 290 percent.
“The impediments to investigating rape during conflict are significant, and they can obstruct successful prosecutions in both local and international courts,” Neha Wadekar reports in Foreign Policy. “For most survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Sudan, justice remains elusive.”
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Prepare for the ballot box. Singaporean President Tharman Shanmugaratnam dissolved parliament on Tuesday and announced new elections to be held on May 3. According to local media, opposition groups are expected to challenge the ruling People’s Action Party for all 97 available parliamentary seats as voters express growing concern over high costs of living, housing needs, unemployment, and a lack of health care.
This will be the city-state’s 14th general election since its independence in 1965, and it will be the first major test for Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, who took office just last year. The conservative People’s Action Party has won every general election since Singapore was granted self-rule, but the opposition Workers’ Party has recorded steady gains in recent years—especially as new threats to the global economy emerge, such as stunted COVID-19 recovery and mounting U.S. tariffs.
Currying trade favors. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Malaysia on Tuesday to make the case for free trade with Beijing’s Southeast Asian partners. During a meeting the day before in Vietnam, Xi urged Hanoi to oppose “unilateral bullying,” alluding to Trump’s aggressive trade war. Chinese trade relations “have brought the world valuable stability and certainty” in a “turbulent world,” Xi said before flying to Malaysia, where the Chinese president tried to curry additional favor to counter U.S. tariffs on Beijing, which now total 145 percent.
Xi’s tour of Southeast Asia kicked off the same day that the Trump administration initiated national security investigations into semiconductor chip and pharmaceutical imports. The White House has suggested that such investigations could lead to more tariffs, which could further hurt China as well as other foreign markets.
“Walking back the [U.S.-China] trade war will prove challenging for two countries led by leaders with substantial egos and largely unchecked power,” FP’s Lili Pike and Christina Lu reported last week.
War on Pride. Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party passed a constitutional amendment on Monday that furthers Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s efforts to curtail LGBTQ rights. The new mandate states that all Hungarians are either male or female, effectively ignoring intersex individuals as well as people who identify as nonbinary or transgender. The amendment also includes a clause reinforcing a ban passed last month on public LGBTQ Pride events, which the far right argues are a danger to the country’s young people; the law allows officials to use facial recognition tools to identify those who attend these events.
“The international gender network must take its hands off our children,” Orban said on Monday. “Now, with the change in America, the winds have shifted in our favor,” he added, referring to Trump’s reelection and ensuing crackdown on transgender rights and other so-called “woke” policies, such as the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Orban has repeatedly targeted the LGBTQ community ahead of parliamentary elections next year. Monday’s amendment, passed along party lines by a 140-21 vote, declares that children’s rights to moral, physical, and spiritual development supersede all other rights except for the right to life.
“These laws represent a significant escalation in the government’s efforts to suppress dissent, weaken human rights protection, and consolidate its grip on power,” said the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a rights group.
Odds and Ends
Five Frenchmen, a Belgian woman, and German police meet at a cathedral. No, this is not the start of a bad joke. This is what happened on Sunday when six young climbers tried to scale the historic Cologne Cathedral. German police dressed in riot gear and backed by a helicopter intercepted the individuals inside the tower’s stairwell, where they discovered that several doors had been broken into. The identities of the suspects remain undisclosed due to German privacy laws.
