War and Humanitarian Disaster in Sudan

For the people of Sudan, nowhere is currently safe. Since the spring of 2023, the country has been consumed by a devastating civil war that has claimed thousands of lives, displaced millions, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.

The popular uprising that ended the rule of Omar Bashir in 2019  led to military rule that was unsuccessful in transitioning to a civilian government. The long-standing tensions between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their regional and international allies erupted in civilian war between two armies, a war that has been almost completely absent in Western media.

In this lecture Professor Munzoul Assal attempts to make sense of the historical, structural, and regional origins of this conflict and the different forces and actors involved.

Can the civil war in Sudan be reduced to an armed struggle between two rival groups fighting for political hegemony, or do the two groups represent different institutional or political interests?

What is the role of regional and international powers in the conflict? What happened to the country’s civilian and revolutionary forces? Do they still play a role? What can the international community do to help protect Sudanese civilians?

A light lunch will be served.

Speaker: Munzoul Assal, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Khartoum and Senior Researcher at CMI. He is also Professor II at the Department of social anthropology, UiB. Prior to this he was the Director of the Peace Research Institute at the University of Khartoum, and Dean of Scientific Research.

The lecture will be chaired by Pelle Valentin Olsen (UiB).