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THE UNITED NATIONS, United States: After the bloody civil war in Sudan’s Darfur region 20 years ago, the world said “never again.”
And yet it is happening again, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told AFP in a sobering interview.
Since April 2023, a war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has left tens of thousands of people dead and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
The violence, with its “ethnic connotations,” is reminiscent of what happened 20 years ago in Darfur, Grandi says. Women have been raped, children forcibly recruited, and there is gruesome violence against people who resist.
In 2003, dictator Omar Al-Bashir unleashed the Janjaweed militias on non-Arab communities in Darfur. An estimated 300,000 people were killed and close to 2.5 million people were displaced.
The International Criminal Court is investigating allegations that Al-Bashir, who is still at large, committed genocide and crimes against humanity, among other charges, in Darfur between 2003 and 2008.
RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is the most notorious member of the Janjaweed. The new conflict has already left tens of thousands dead.
“It is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world,” with an “appalling” 12 million people displaced and one-third of those forced to seek refuge in “fragile” neighboring countries, Grandi says.
Has the world forgotten about Sudan’s current crisis?
“Let’s be frank, I’m not sure the world is forgetting because it has never paid much attention to it,” Grandi says. He is not optimistic that will change at the annual UN General Assembly in New York this week.
The situation in North Darfur’s El-Fasher, the last major city in the region still under army control, is “catastrophic,” Grandi said, with hundreds of thousands of people trapped amid an 18-month siege by RSF.
“Not only they’re inside, hungry and desperate, but they’re not even allowed to leave the city to seek help somewhere else, so they flee at night, at great risk. I’m sure that many do not make it,” Grandi said.

- Crisis fatigue? -

“Compared to 20 years ago... the international attention is much less. Is it fatigue? Is it competition of other crises? Is it a sense that these crises never get solved? Difficult to tell, but people are suffering in the same way,” he said.
Non-profits and UN agencies have fewer and fewer resources to address the problem, due to steep cuts in foreign aid from the United States and Europe.
“My message to European donors, European countries in particular, is that it is a huge strategic mistake,” Grandi said.
Slashing humanitarian aid to people “in this belt around Europe that is so full of crisis, is a recipe for seeing more people moving on toward Europe,” he said.
On another continent, another raging conflict is not receiving much international attention: the deadly civil war in Myanmar between rebel groups and the army, which has been in power since a 2021 coup.
Grandi, who just returned from Myanmar, called it “a very harsh, brutal conflict” that targets civilian communities and has uprooted about three million people — “probably more, in my opinion.”
The plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority, of whom more than a million are living as refugees in neighboring Bangladesh, will be discussed at a high-level UN meeting in New York on September 30.
“It’s true that there is little political attention for these very complicated conflicts in a world where no conflict seems to find a solution, even the big ones like Ukraine, like Gaza,” he said.
But, he added, “we have to be careful not to generalize too much” about indifference.
“There are also a lot of people that do care, that do care when you tell them the story. When you explain about suffering.
“It’s constant work that we have to do in that respect.”

JERUSALEM: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to expand Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank after Britain, Canada and Australia recognized a Palestinian state.
"For years, I have prevented the creation of this terror state despite enormous pressure both domestically and internationally," he said in a statement.
"We have done so with determination and political wisdom. Moreover, we have doubled Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and we will continue on this path," he said using the Biblical name for the West Bank.
Netanyahu on Sunday accused foreign leaders of giving a “prize” to Hamas.

He put out an angry statement after Britain and other Western allies said they were unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state in a step seen as a show of displeasure with Israel.
Netanyahu added: “A Palestinian state will not be established west of the Jordan River.”
Netanyahu said he would announce Israel’s response after a trip to the US, where he is to meet President Donald Trump at the White House.
He is set to give a speech to the General Assembly on Friday before heading to see Trump.
The UK has for decades supported an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, but insisted recognition must come as part of a peace plan to achieve a two-state solution.
However, the government has become increasingly worried that such a solution is becoming all but impossible – and not only because of the razing of Gaza and displacement of most of its population during nearly two years of conflict, which has seen more than 65,000 people killed in Gaza, displaced around 90 percent of the population and caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.

Last week, independent experts commissioned by the UN’s Human Rights Council concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Also vexing the UK is Israel’s government has been aggressively expanding settlements in the West Bank, land Palestinians want for their future state. 
Much of the world regards Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, which is ostensibly run by the Palestinian Authority, as illegal.
“This move has symbolic and historic weight, makes clear the U.K.’s concerns about the survival of a two-state solution, and is intended to keep that goal relevant and alive,” said Olivia O’Sullivan, director of the UK in the World Programme at the London-based think tank, Chatham House.
For the Palestinians, President Mahmoud Abbas stressed that Sunday’s moves constituted an important and necessary step toward achieving a just peace in accordance with international law.
Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian head of mission in the UK, said that recognition would right a colonial-era wrong. 
“The issue today is ending the denial of our existence that started 108 years ago, in 1917,” he said. 
“And I think today, the British people should celebrate a day when history is being corrected, when wrongs are being righted, when recognition of the wrongs of the past are beginning to be corrected.”
A senior Hamas official hailed Britain, Canada and Australia's recognition of a Palestinian state, describing it as a victory for the rights of Palestinians.
"These developments represent a victory for Palestinian rights and the justice of our cause, and send a clear message: no matter how far the occupation goes in its crimes, it will never be able to erase our national rights," Mahmoud Mardawi said