The crisis in Sudan had already become one of the defining humanitarian disasters of the war era by the time aid groups published their latest global watchlist, and the new ranking put the country at the top again on 2024-12-11.
The report from the International Rescue Committee said Sudan was the single largest humanitarian crisis it had ever recorded, a grim marker for a conflict that began in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The war has killed at least 61,000 people, according to the conservative estimate cited in the report, and forced 11 million from their homes. United Nations figures in the same coverage put the number of people in need of aid at nearly 25 million, roughly half of Sudan's population.
The scale of need is what makes the crisis stand out even among a long list of emergencies. The report said more than 305 million people worldwide need humanitarian assistance, and the countries on its watchlist account for 82% of them. Sudan alone represents 10% of all people in need, a concentration that underlines how quickly the country has moved from a national conflict to an international emergency.
The new ranking also points to the way the war is spilling into nearly every aspect of civilian life. The conflict has driven mass displacement, widened hunger, and left aid agencies warning that the situation is still deteriorating. DW reported that at least 127 people were killed in Sudan the day before the story ran, mostly civilians, as cease-fire efforts remained stalled.
The IRC list did not treat Sudan in isolation. Gaza, the West Bank, Myanmar, Syria and South Sudan were next in line among the places most likely to face worsening humanitarian conditions in 2025, followed by a wide group of countries stretching from Lebanon and Haiti to Ukraine and Yemen. But Sudan remained the headline case, both because of the scale of the suffering and because the conflict has now become the biggest recorded crisis in the history of the watchlist.
The report's message was straightforward: the world has not run out of resources, but it has failed to match those resources to need. In that sense, Sudan is not only a war story or a displacement story. It is also a test of whether the international response can keep pace with a crisis that keeps expanding faster than diplomacy or relief can contain it.
