Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Sudan’s worsening humanitarian catastrophe, the lack of a European emissions reduction target, and the latest flash point in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Life Under RSF Control
Sudan’s devastating two-year civil war is “spiraling out of control,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Tuesday, just days after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized the North Darfur city of El Fasher from the Sudanese military. Since fighting between the two sides began in April 2023, clashes have killed more than 40,000 people and displaced over 14 million others, making Sudan one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Now, experts worry that the RSF’s latest victory will only incite more catastrophe.
For the past 18 months, RSF fighters had besieged El Fasher. Then, late last month, the paramilitary group broke through the Sudanese army’s defenses, took control of the city, and launched what rights groups have characterized as a massacre of the city’s civilians. According to the Sudan Doctors Network, at least 1,500 civilians have been killed since the RSF’s takeover, including more than 450 people at a hospital.
“People are dying of malnutrition, disease, and violence. And we are hearing continued reports of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights,” Guterres said on Tuesday.
These reports include accusations of RSF-led summary executions and sexual assaults of civilians. Prosecutors with the International Criminal Court revealed on Monday that they had begun collecting evidence of mass killings and rapes after El Fasher’s fall. The RSF denies that it is committing atrocities.
During the siege, locals also reported that RSF troops targeted community kitchens with drone strikes, forcing people to eat animal feed and sometimes animal hides. Such actions underscore a recent report by the world’s leading hunger monitor, which confirmed on Monday that famine conditions were now present in El Fasher.
This is the first time that the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has determined that the city of El Fasher is facing a famine; the IPC’s first famine determination during Sudan’s civil war was for the Zamzam displacement camp south of El Fasher in August 2024. Monday’s report also warned that three towns where people from El Fasher were fleeing to—Tawila, Mellit, and Tawisha—were also at risk of famine.
More than 21 million Sudanese currently face high levels of acute food insecurity, making Sudan the largest such crisis in the world. “It is clear that we need a cease-fire in Sudan,” Guterres said. “We need to stop this carnage that is absolutely intolerable.”
Halting the conflict remains difficult, though, as experts say outside parties continue to supply the warring sides with weapons. Meanwhile, foreign humanitarian assistance for Sudan has dried up. Just 28 percent of Sudan’s $4.16 billion humanitarian plan has been funded this year due to an unprecedented decline in aid expenditures by donor governments.
“El Fasher is not just a humanitarian emergency,” David Miliband, the head of the International Rescue Committee, wrote in Time magazine on Tuesday. “It is the face of the broader collapse of international diplomacy in the post-WWII era.”
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What We’re Following
Carbon emissions stalemate. European climate ministers scrambled on Tuesday to pass a new emissions reduction target ahead of this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP30), which Brazil will begin hosting meetings for on Thursday. To achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the European Commission’s starting proposal is to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent from 1990 levels by 2040. However, pushback from several European Union members has left the bloc without an easy path forward.
The EU has one of the world’s most ambitious emissions reduction policies, and it has portrayed itself as the would-be leader of COP30 talks. Whereas other major emitters have already submitted their new climate targets, though, the EU’s draft has stalled over concerns that the proposed emissions cuts are too restrictive on domestic industries and that less developed European economies won’t be able to adapt quickly enough to the policy’s demands. Some members have pushed for adding clauses that would weaken the target.
Senior European officials—including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and French President Emmanuel Macron—are slated to attend the COP30 leaders’ summit on Thursday and Friday, where the EU’s carbon emissions stalemate is expected to be high on the agenda.
Battlefield flash point. Fierce clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces raged in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk on Tuesday. The city, largely now reduced to rubble, is a key front-line transport and logistics hub for Kyiv, and for the past year, it has been a primary target of Moscow, which seeks to bring the highway connecting Pokrovsk to other major cities under full Russian control. Moscow has failed to capture a major Ukrainian town since seizing Avdiivka in early 2024.
The current battle lines in Pokrovsk remain blurred. Russia’s defense ministry claims that it has cleared 35 buildings of Ukrainian soldiers and has surrounded Ukrainian troops near the town of Kupiansk, about 100 miles to the north. Although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged on Monday that Pokrovsk was under severe pressure, Kyiv has denied that its troops are encircled in either location.
Not-so-friendly ties. Peru severed diplomatic relations with Mexico on Monday after former Peruvian Prime Minister Betssy Chávez fled to the Mexican Embassy in Lima to request asylum. “Given this unfriendly act, and considering the repeated instances in which the current and former presidents of that country have interfered in Peru’s internal affairs, the Peruvian government has decided to sever diplomatic relations with Mexico today,” Peruvian Foreign Minister Hugo de Zela said.
Chávez stands accused of helping then-President Pedro Castillo to try to dissolve Congress in late 2022 as part of an attempted coup. Her driver previously testified that Chávez asked him to take her to the Mexican Embassy while the dissolution was in progress. Chávez denied making such a request at that time and said she had not known of Castillo’s plans. Her lawyer told local media on Monday that he had not heard from his client in several days.
Mexico City denounced Lima’s diplomatic response as “excessive and disproportionate,” arguing that Chávez’s asylum request is compliant with Mexican laws and does not constitute an intervention in Peru’s internal affairs.
Odds and Ends
Sure, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung gifted U.S. President Donald Trump a golden imperial crown last week, but FP’s World Brief writer thinks the bigger winner of recent state gifts is Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty. To mark the unveiling of Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum, which opened its doors to the public on Tuesday, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen presented Abdelatty on Saturday with a 1,476-piece Lego set of the Great Pyramid of Giza. From the look of sheer joy on Abdelatty’s face, the gift was much appreciated, and for $130, you too can enjoy the Danish company’s popular model.
The post The Fall of El Fasher Marks Another Dark Turn in Sudan’s Civil War appeared first on Foreign Policy.
