Editor’s Note: This article contains references to sexual assault.
A lone army officer walks down an empty road, among the remnants of a destroyed bridge. Rubble of cars and the shells of objects and papers and blankets are scattered across the sidewalks.
The road is identical on either side, disappearing into the horizon. Thin lights hang over the way, as if to usher the ghost of the cars that once passed through this street. Their electricity is gone, and the sky is a flat blue, cloudless, as if it had been pressed against a blank page.
I wonder what stories sat at each wheel.
If words do not suffice, I beg of you to just look, to fix your eyes on the sheer devastation that we have allowed to go unrestrained. The dead in Sudan are visible from satellites, but somehow still invisible to us. Mounds of bodies pile on top of each other other near hospitals and neighborhoods. This morning I walked out of Goldwin Smith Hall and tried to imagine such a thing, but I could not, because I do not think that the human mind can even grasp such a level of inhumanity.
I must amplify the struggle of the people of Sudan. Since the civil war began in April of 2023, I could hardly find any articles, and no op-eds in the Cornell Sun written urging people to do so much as acknowledge that this crisis is happening.
Imaging from Sudan in 2025 showed discolored clusters identified as mounds of human bodies piled on top of each other. What level of carnage does it take for the deceased to appear on a lens thousands of miles from the ground?
The largest humanitarian crisis of our generation is happening right in front of our eyes, and nothing has been done to stop it.
The pressing situation in Sudan has its roots in more than decades of internal conflict, but it most recently erupted in April 2023 when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary RSF. Since then, more than 150,000 people have been confirmed dead, though the true number is expected to be much higher. Sudan has been called an “epicenter of profound suffering,” and a prolonged siege of El Fasher in late October of last year has brought unbelievable atrocities to light. Hospitals and schools have been used as killing fields, where people are subject to mass executions and torture.
We can view the consequences of this genocide so impersonally. Someone who could’ve been a mother, father, sibling, friend, is reduced to no more than a speck on a grainy image. As we look through a microscope at these lives that could’ve been, we have the privilege of comfort, analysis and even debate. That’s revolting.
These people had passions and dreams, swept into an insurgency that they had no control over, and now they are plastered on every mainstream news source like CNN, BBC and NPR, and yet they continue to be ignored.
Most disturbing is how the plight of the Sudanese people went from a topic of contention to one that was pushed aside.
This crisis does not stop when we turn away. Over 1,000 days of war is never without massive repercussions — over 12 million people have been displaced, and 33.7 million are in need of humanitarian support. 90% of school-aged children now lack formal education, and high school students haven’t been able to take their exams since 2023, pushing back the future of an entire generation.
Sudan’s healthcare system has collapsed, which is disastrous at a time where deep famine ravages the already suffering population, and attacks on aid workers and hospitals have only worsened the situation. The dire food shortage has left people vulnerable to illness and infection, and the numbers have risen so that more people in Sudan are living in famine than the rest of the world combined.
In almost every war, civilians are the ones who suffer most, and Sudan is unfortunately one of the most extreme examples. Women and girls are subject to brutal sexual violence, sometimes raped in front of family members, some in their own homes and some even detained in groups and held in conditions of sexual enslavement, chained together, assaulted on a daily basis for months on end.
Médecins Sans Frontières reports a number of stories from anonymous Sudanese women who were taken in by their team in Darfur. When recounting a night where houses in a neighborhood were raided by members of the RSF, one woman said, “The men were hiding in toilets or in some rooms where they could close the doors. The women didn’t hide because it was just beating and rape for us, but the men would get killed.”
Another survivor, a 17-year-old girl who was gang-raped by seven different soldiers, said while recounting the event, “I wanted to lose my memory after that.”
This is not just a humanitarian crisis; it is a feminist issue, and our continued silence allows more and more civilians to fall victim to this lengthy list of atrocities.
Truthfully, I am at a loss of any idea of how to mobilize this campus. Students walk over to me and thank me for my work. Sometimes others stare at me wordlessly. Others scrutinize my work in silence, or see it as some aspect of my nature, characterizing me as an activist or a protestor.
Reader, am I an activist for caring about human life? Am I outspoken for writing about something that can be of access to you with a simple google search? I am disappointed that I have become intellectualized simply because I possess empathy for others.
Now resistance is shared in empty condolences and passing remarks.
Martin Luther King, Jr. called silence a betrayal. It is true, that we have not only betrayed the people of Sudan, but we have also betrayed humanity by doing nothing. Allowing such events to unfold is an insult to humanity. We must mobilize and act for Sudan as soon as possible, because the conflict only worsens as the days pass.
Displaced people and survivors are in dire need of medical care, psychological support, healthcare and basic human needs such as food, water and shelter. None of these should be a privilege for the people of Sudan. It is easy to think that we are ordinary people on the other side of the ocean, and providing such aid is out of our control. But this is far from the truth.
The easiest thing to do is educate yourself and others about this issue. Write about it, speak about it and keep it in the public eye. We cannot let this become a forgotten crisis.
Next, it is vital that we completely boycott the United Arab Emirates, a nation that is greatly supplying the RSF with weapons and encouraging this war for monetary gain, particularly Sudanese gold. Without the UAE, the conflict would have never escalated to this level.
Moreover, if you are able, please consider donating to organizations such as UNICEF USA, the International Rescue Committee, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International and even online fundraisers for individual families living through these horrific events.
Leah Badawi '27 is an Opinion Columnist and a Government and English student in the College of Arts & Sciences. She also serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Rainy Day Literary Magazine. Her fortnightly column Leah Down The Law reflects on politics, history, and broader culture in an attempt to tell stories that are often left between the lines. She can be reached at lbadawi@cornellsun.com.
