Sudan in the Shadows: How Global Power, Algorithms and Legal Politics Keep a Genocide Unnamed

Satellite image of Al Fashir, North Darfur, showing UN refugee camps amid seasonal farmland. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Sudan is facing one of the world’s most catastrophic humanitarian crises, with large-scale violence, ethnic targeting, and mass forced migration. More than 13 million people have been displaced, and according to the World Food Programme, 21.2 million people – almost half the population – are facing acute food insecurity, making it the world’s largest hunger crisis. Both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have used starvation as a weapon of war, blocking access to food, medicine, and humanitarian assistance. Many researchers, journalists, activists, and observers warn that the atrocities committed in Darfur – including targeted killings of the Masalit ethnic group, mass displacement, destruction of homes – constitute genocide. Yet despite evidence, Sudan has received remarkably little sustained diplomatic pressure or media attention. Why? The answer lies at the intersection of legal and political processes, media and information flows, and economic interests, producing a form of structural invisibility that shields the perpetrators and those who benefit from this silence.

The Politics of Naming Genocide

Using the term genocide is not just a matter of words. It carries legal, diplomatic, and moral weight. Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, all signatory states – and the UN bodies they participate in – are legally obligated to prevent and punish genocide once it is identified. In principle, applying the term should compel governments to impose sanctions, restrict arms transfers, support international prosecutions, or authorise humanitarian and protective interventions. But in Sudan, the path from documented atrocities to formal recognition has been repeatedly obstructed, which is troubling given the stark facts. In 2023-2024, the RSF carried out mass killings and systematic village destruction in Darfur, deliberately targeting the Masalit. Sudanese lawyers presented satellite imagery, eyewitness testimonies, and weapons-tracking evidence linking artillery and small arms used in the attacks to logistics chains involving the UAE.

Sudan’s 2025 case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) sought provisional measures to halt arms transfers and financial support from the UAE to RSF – measures that, if granted, could have slowed the violence and signalled international accountability. However, the ICJ dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, leaving both the victims and the international legal system in limbo, while the flow of weapons continued unchecked.

Outside the courtroom, recognition of genocide remains shaped not by evidence but by geopolitical interests. The United States has labelled RSF atrocities against the Masalit a genocide and imposed targeted sanctions on RSF leaders, yet even this move aligns with Washington’s strategic preferences. The US seeks to limit the influence of Gulf powers in the Horn of Africa, stabilise Red Sea trade routes, and counter the growing networks of paramilitary gold and arms economies that undermine Western leverage. Calling the atrocities genocide allows the US to assert normative leadership while pressuring rivals, without committing to large-scale intervention. By contrast, major Western powers with close ties to the UAE have remained silent. For the UAE, Sudan is central to a broader strategic agenda: securing gold supply chains that feed its global commodities market, expanding influence across the Red Sea corridor, and supporting allied militias that advance its regional security interests. Acknowledging genocide would jeopardise these priorities. It would expose Emirati involvement, trigger sanctions, disrupt resource flows, and set legal precedents that could constrain similar interventions elsewhere. Other states with economic or military partnerships in the region have similar incentives to avoid the term, as doing so could compel action they are unwilling to take.

In Sudan, genocide seems to be less a question of fact than of power. Those who hold the power to influence international institutions, determine visitability, and those who wield economic leverage, shape the legal recognition of atrocities. As a result, while the world debates definitions, millions of lives remain invisible and unprotected.

 

Why Did the World Only “Discover” Sudan in 2024?

Information has been weaponised long before Sudan’s current war – authoritarian regimes have long used communication blackouts, censorship, and misinformation to obscure atrocities. From Ethiopia’s blackout during the Tigray war to Myanmar’s internet shutdowns against the Rohingya, governments have repeatedly learned that controlling information delays international scrutiny. Sudan followed the same pattern. In February and March 2024, it suffered near-total telecommunications blackouts. Internet and phone networks went dark across Darfur and Khartoum, leaving millions cut off from the outside world. Families could not communicate with relatives, humanitarian organisations could not coordinate, and activists could not document atrocities. While villages were burned and civilians were killed or starved, much of the outside world remained unaware. Reporting was further complicated by the chaos on the ground. Battles were fought on multiple fronts, infrastructure was destroyed, and millions fled, often into areas unreachable by journalists or aid convoys. Verifying attacks – matching eyewitness accounts to imagery or reports – became nearly impossible. The crisis broke through to international headlines only when famine reached catastrophic levels – when the scale of death became impossible to ignore, even for a system designed to look away. The world “discovered” Sudan not because the violence suddenly intensified, but because the deliberate erasure of information finally reached a point where it could no longer contain the truth.

Even once information resurfaced, it struggled to reach a wider audience. Social media platforms and news algorithms prioritise content that generates high engagement and Sudanese voices, operating under blackout, forced migration, or repression, could not compete. Videos of destroyed towns or mass displacement rarely went viral as they were pushed aside by other high-profile crises such as Ukraine or Gaza. In effect, digital systems reproduced the blackout imposed on the ground, filtering Sudan out of global view.

Who Benefits? The Economy of Silence

Sudan’s invisibility persists not simply because actors deny the term genocide, but because the war has been woven into transnational economic and political systems that profit from this silence. What distinguishes this part of the crisis is not just the reluctance to name atrocities, but how silence actively enables the extraction of resources, the maintenance of political alliances, and the avoidance of accountability.

At the centre of this economy of silence is the RSF’s control over gold mining in Darfur. These supply chains operate with minimal oversight: gold is transported across borders, refined abroad, and enters global markets with little trace of its origins. Public recognition of mass atrocities, let alone genocide, would expose these networks to sanctions, compliance checks and reputational risk. Keeping Sudan out of view protects the intermediaries, traders, and state actors who depend on this flow of resources and who would face financial and legal consequences if accountability mechanisms were triggered. Diplomatic and security partnerships also benefit. States with strategic ties to Sudan or its regional patrons avoid confronting difficult questions about their own involvement – questions that formal recognition of mass atrocities would make unavoidable. By maintaining a low profile on Sudan, they preserve military cooperation, arms sales, and geopolitical influence without justifying their alliances in moral or legal terms. Lastly, the humanitarian system is indirectly affected as well. Delayed recognition slows mobilisation, funding and operational access, making it harder for aid agencies to produce the kind of on-the-ground documentation that would challenge global indifference. This feedback loop – silence generating inaction, and inaction reinforcing silence – ultimately benefits those who profit from Sudan remaining out of view.

The crisis is invisible not because it is remote, but because the global information system decides what counts as a crisis worth seeing. The system rewards crises that are easy to narrate and politically convenient, while quietly sidelining those, like Sudan’s, that are difficult, fragmented, or uncomfortable for global powers. The world’s silence is structural, deliberate and deadly: for those on the ground, this invisibility is a matter of life and death. Sudan is not unknown. It is deliberately obscured and kept in the shadows by the very institutions and systems that claim to uphold justice and protect human life.

Written by Ola Krawczyk

Edited by Rana Zeidan