Photo: World VisionSudan is the world’s forgotten crisis. That needs to change, now, World Vision Sudan national director Simon Mane says. Sudan’s plight was tragic enough before the drones arrived. But that new scourge of the 21st century is now visiting further chaos and heartache on a country already stretched to breaking point. A recent report from medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) captures the horror, describing a drone attack reportedly carried out by the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Al-Jabalain Hospital in Sudan’s White Nile State. "There were two strikes, one hit the operating theatre and the other one the maternity ward," the organisation reported. "This unacceptable assault resulted in at least 10 fatalities, including seven medical staff, some of whom have previously worked with MSF. The attack is even more appalling as it occurred during a children’s immunisation campaign." Simon Mane knows the territory. As World Vision’s national director for Sudan he must now negotiate this new threat in what was, perhaps, already the world’s most complex and difficult humanitarian disaster. War in Sudan has become a drone war, he confirms. They are being used to destroy communities’ shelters, destroy their infrastructure, scaling up their vulnerability once again. And as the man responsible for his aid organisation’s work in the country, he’s acutely aware of what it means for World Vision staff. "Anything can happen at any time, even the protection of humanitarian workers remains very relative, because we don’t know when the drone will be hitting," he says. "Are we in the right place at the time the drone will be hitting? No, we don’t know. We are just working, trusting in God." That trust must be tested at times, as the near misses get closer — and they have been very close. "The last one was 50 metres from our office, the drone hit one of the buildings in a hospital and we have even received debris in our office," Mane says. Fortunately no-one was injured in the incident, in Nyala, the capital city of South Darfur, he says, offering another prayer of thanks. Mane’s faith is not in doubt. There’s a grotesque sort of symmetry in the appearance of drones in Sudan’s skies, death dealt remotely by operators at a safe remove from the carnage they cause. Because that is so much a part of Sudan’s predicament. Theirs is a war driven to a significant extent by foreign players. Mane can attest to this too. The war is fuelled by third parties beyond the country’s borders, he says, and because their interests are served by continued killing, they continue to send the weapons used on the ground — and now also the drones. Children at Feina displaced persons camp in South Darfur’s Jabal Marra area, Sudan. Photo: World Vision Amnesty International has listed weapons from China, Russia, Serbia, Turkiye, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemen as making their way to Sudan — sold either to the government forces or the RSF. Last year, questions were asked about Australian-made weapons sold into the UAE making their way to the RSF. Similarly, investigators have linked European Union-made arms to the RSF, again via the UAE. The existing United Nations arms embargo on the west-Sudan province of Darfur is completely ineffective, Amnesty says. Failing now to exclude the drones. Mane shares his dispatches from a dystopia, somewhat incongruously, from the warm luxury of a Dunedin cafe — which provides an almost impossible contrast to the scenes he describes. The stories, the facts, the reality, the horrors, the numbers — he runs through them all in practised fashion, as you would when you’re going from country to country, city to city, from one meeting to the next, imploring the world to notice and to care. It’s a lot to take in, to understand, but the calm patience with which Mane explains helps. Those qualities must also be an enormous asset on the ground, amid the madness. That and his broad shoulders, he looks built to carry the weight of these concerns. Though there’s danger in thinking that way, Sudan’s crisis should not be someone else’s problem. This is a big part of Mane’s message, that Sudan has been overlooked, forgotten as the world concentrates its attention on conflicts elsewhere. The toll in lives and suffering demands that Sudan is a priority, he says. Time and again, Mane emphasises the complexity of the situation. It is unprecedented in his experience, and his experience is extensive. Mane, who is Senegalese, has worked for World Vision for 26 years across Africa. "I’ve worked in different, very complex and fragile contexts, like Mauritania and Mali, where I was directly dealing with terrorist issues in the northern part of the country, where we have a huge number of terrorist groups who are controlling the area while the needs of communities were increasing," he says. "But I’ve managed by the support of God to open offices in those areas and bring support to the communities." He’s also been in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad, countries facing their own multi-faceted challenges. But still, Sudan stands out. "The particularity of this war in Sudan is the complexity of the context because we have the combination of man-made disasters, which means the crisis, the war between the two parties, but also natural disasters, we are combining both." While war has raged all around, Sudan has been further plagued by drought, floods and landslides, outbreaks of cholera and dengue fever. Indeed, Sudan is now starting on its rainy season, its resilience exhausted. Simon Mane, national director for World Vision in Sudan, during his stop in Dunedin. Photo: Peter McIntosh A quick recap on how we arrived here should probably cover Sudan’s colonial period, Britain’s role in institutionalising division, and the continued looting of its natural resources, notably oil and gold, then the brief period of civilian rule after the long dictatorship of coup leader Omar al-Bashir was finally overthrown in 2019. Unfortunately, democracy was short lived, as a coup in 2021 installed general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan at the head of another military government. A power struggle within the regime broke out into open civil war in 2023 between al-Burhan’s government forces and Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo Musa’s rebels — now known as the RSF, but previously infamous as the Janjaweed militia, implicated in earlier genocidal killings in Darfur. Despite all this, one of the words Mane uses most often is hope, dotted through his description of World Vision’s work. It must be an indispensable commodity for those responding daily and in real time to the crisis — the largest of our day, according to Mane. He begins to run through the numbers, to dispel any doubt. "We have over 33.7 million people in need, 17 million children who are lacking assistance, 14 million women and girls who are totally lacking protection against gender-based violence," he says. Fourteen million people are displaced, more than a quarter of the population, either within the country or outside — seeking safety. About 9 million are internally displaced, the remaining millions spread across the country’s neighbours. "The needs in Sudan are really dire. All sectors have collapsed. Our supply chain is totally disrupted. So the degradation of the situation is very, very, very high — leaving communities without food, without water, hygiene and sanitation, without health, without education, without protection. And the youngest are exposed to be recruited by militias on the ground." There are 27 million people who are expecting to receive at least one meal a day and they are not receiving it, he says. In their weakened state, and with poor access to clean water, people fall prey to disease. Last year there were 72,000 cases of cholera, killing 3500 people, half of them children. "Children cannot wait until tomorrow to be protected, to be saved," Mane says. "If we wait until tomorrow they will die." More than four million children are suffering from acute malnutrition, the condition of 800,000 of them is so severe they need medical treatment — in a country where paediatric hospitals are being bombed. There are mothers filling their children’s stomachs with boiled water, in an attempt to deceive the hunger, he says. They then monitor their children while they sleep, checking the pulse to make sure they are still alive. So, World Vision also prioritises the needs of children — because this is existential for a country. "We are afraid for the future of Sudan because the future of children has been stolen," Mane says. One of World Vision’s interventions, in partnership with the UN World Food Programme, is a homegrown school meal programme. It runs together with work to restore education. Feina displaced persons camp in South Darfur’s Jabal Marra area, Sudan. Photo: World Vision Farmers are given seeds and fertiliser to produce crops, then those crops are used to feed children at school. So far they’ve opened five schools as part of the initiative, which has met with approval from the Sudanese government’s ministry of education, so they now plan to scale up and move into different areas. But keeping people alive remains uppermost. At this time, 78% of World Vision’s funding goes to lifesaving activities because of the level of vulnerability, Mane says. Over time, he hopes they can shift the emphasis so more of their spend goes on building the resilience of communities, empowering them economically where a modicum of stability allows for it. But, again, the scale of the task is daunting. Sudan is a massive country, Africa’s third largest by area. World Vision operates in eight of its 18 states — the war makes some too dangerous to reach. Parts of Kordofan are like that. "Access is extremely complex because of the fighting." El Fasher in northern Darfur another. "We don’t have access because of the current situation and atrocities that have been committed there." This is a country at war, where some lines can not be crossed. Aid agencies can not drive directly from government-held areas to rebel-controlled territory. You go the long way around via Kenya and South Sudan, then if you are trying to access Darfur, it is 12 hours of driving through 85 checkpoints. It is extraordinary enough that the organisation manages to work on both sides of the frontline, neither Sudan’s government nor the RSF are happy about it. World Vision has faced the threat of being de-registered by one side or the other. The distances and the extra layers of bureaucracy all add delay and cost. It’s expensive work. Simply hiring a car for a day costs $600. So, beyond safety issues, extending World Vision’s humanitarian reach is also only possible if there is money to pay for it. The global humanitarian response is underfunded, Mane says. Meeting the needs of the more than 33 million people in Sudan affected by war and natural disaster would cost about $US2.9 billion dollars ($NZ5 billion), but only about 25% of that amount has been funded. "As World Vision, our required funding directly to support communities is about $US179 million. We just covered $116 million. We have a huge gap of close to $60 million that we are not able to cover because of the shrinking of the funding." That’s just this year’s budget, and covers only the absolutely essential life-saving work. The $US2.9 billion figure comes from "Sudan: Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026", a report by OCHA, the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The plan repeats Mane’s description of the crisis, talking about a strict prioritisation exercise undertaken by those delivering assistance to keep people alive at a time when aid dollars have been in decline. And as if to underline Mane’s point that Sudan is the forgotten disaster at a time of so many flash points, on visiting the OCHA website to access a copy of the report, a pop-up intervenes, obscuring the page’s content, with an appeal for funds for Ukraine. There is no such confusion in Mane’s message. Sudan has to be in the heart of New Zealand communities, it must command the critical attention of the government of New Zealand, he says. "If nothing is done, we will be facing the devastating situation that will continue to increase the level of vulnerability of the country. "So, I’m using this opportunity to call upon the government of New Zealand, civil societies, communities globally in New Zealand to stand for Sudan communities." Figures from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade appear to back up Mane’s contention that Sudan is the poor cousin in terms of support. Since the 2022/23 financial year, New Zealand has provided humanitarian contributions totalling $17.5 million in response to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, a ministry spokesperson says. This includes $6 million in support for the regional refugee response in Sudan’s neighbouring countries. In the same period New Zealand has provided humanitarian contributions totalling $37 million to Ukraine and humanitarian contributions totalling $43.5 million in the occupied Palestinian territories. Total humanitarian aid to Ukraine stands at $45 million and it has also received the best part of $60 million in military support. It is perhaps surprising that not more is made of Sudan’s geostrategic importance, given such considerations play a large part in the response to Ukraine’s war and in discussions of the Middle East. Surely the war in Sudan poses a threat to important Red Sea shipping lanes. Asked whether this should help focus attention, Mane chooses another lens. Yes, Sudan is open to the "Red Sea of Moses", he says. "We know what Moses went through when helping communities to cross the sea and it means a lot, it should mean a lot for all of us." Interview concluded, Mane leaves directly for the airport, it seems there’s time for nothing but the mission. And Mane could be forgiven if at least at little of his attention were elsewhere just now. He is indeed related to the Senagalese footballer Sadio Mane, a leading contributor to Liverpool’s all-conquering seasons and talisman of his national side at the football world cup. Yes, the World Vision director is proud of the connection but he has no idea of the teams in Senegal’s group. Maybe he’ll find time for that at some point. Maybe.
