The past year witnessed the outbreak of devastating wars and conflicts around the globe. However, the conflict in Sudan, which escalated into a wide-scale war last April, has been poorly covered by Western media outlets. It is perceived as less significant than wars in areas such as Gaza and Ukraine, according to an article in Newsweek.
Mohamed Elbandari, the article's author, an independent researcher with previous experience teaching journalism in the United States and New Zealand, notes a certain obscurity in the West's stance towards the events in Sudan. "Rarely did we see reports about it last year in the press," he says, regarding the challenges this war poses to other African nations, including Egypt, as well as to unstable countries in the Sahel, and Eastern and Northern Africa.
Similarly, there was scant coverage of the peace summit held in Egypt this past July, which discussed the negative implications of the war in Sudan on the seven neighboring states, the author mentions.
The independent researcher pointed out that since the popular uprising that toppled the "dictatorial" President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, Sudan has been mired in "onerous" economic challenges, street protests, and fresh outbreaks of violence in the Darfur region.
Hostilities commenced on April 15, 2023, between the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, widely known as Hemeti.
As Western media remains engrossed in other conflicts, like the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the Sudanese people remain trapped in a struggle "not of their making," with hunger becoming rampant.
When comparing Western coverage of these three wars, any media researcher can observe that there is a shortfall in how the news of Sudan's war is conveyed. The writer adds that Sudanese refugees fleeing the conflict are often portrayed as "weak, naive, and backward."
The author alleges that Western media regards the lives of Sudanese, and Africans as a whole, as less deserving of sympathy than those of Ukrainians, Israelis, or Palestinians.
He adds that Sudan faces a "catastrophe" with the drying up of United Nations funds, while aid workers describe the crisis there as the "forgotten war."
Many Africans were dismayed when the United Nations Security Council unanimously voted in early December to end the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), established in Khartoum in 2020 to support the political transition process in the country.
According to the article, the termination of UNITAMS' mission foreshadows grave consequences for Sudanese civilians, potentially dragging the country toward a disaster in 2024. The withdrawal of UNITAMS also represents a "new setback" for the United Nations, which faces skepticism—most of it in Africa—concerning its political and security efficiency.
The article concludes that the "feeble" Western media coverage of the war in Sudan has weakened the prospects for launching peace initiatives to end the conflict between the army and the Rapid Support Forces.
The writer advises Western media to broaden its coverage of events in Sudan and Africa more generally, beyond just the issue of the "alarming flow" of Sudanese and African refugees to the West.
