SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: New Humanitarian - New Humanitarian - Sudan’s revolution runs aground in Darfur

8/1/2020: New Humanitarian - Sudan’s revolution runs aground in Darfur, by Tom Gardner

In a feature piece, Tom Gardner quotes internally displaced persons in “troubled” western Darfur, where the “revolution is yet to be fully felt…where heavily-armed militia still terrorise civilians, hold on to land they have seized, and make reconciliation harder.“

IDP Adin Idriss blamed the government for “doing nothing” to stop the occupation of his old farm by Arab militiamen, preventing African tribes from arming themselves in self-defence without risking arrest.

However, an anonymous UN official said that the return of IDPs would refuel conflict. Sudan expert Alex de Waal elaborated that part of the solution will be the acceptance that Darfur’s “settlement patterns and demographics have changed for good,” citing “dramatic and accelerated urbanization.” Gardner adds that displacement camps now “resemble towns.”

Helen Young of Tufts University therefore calls for ways to also support poor Arab tribes to enable a peace settlement.