Out of Focus: Sudan’s Worsening Humanitarian Crisis and Civil War
March 4th, 2025 12:00PM -1:00PM
On January 7, the U.S. classified Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces as committing genocide in the ongoing civil war. The UN reports that over 24 million people are facing acute hunger, and the International Rescue Committee calls it the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Why hasn’t the international community, especially the West, given this crisis the attention it requires?
While the West may be silent, regional actors are deeply involved. Who are they, and what’s their stake in this conflict? Join Sudan experts Alex de Waal, Executive Director of The World Peace Foundation, and Kholood Khair, Founding Director of Confluence Advisory, as they discuss the current state of the war, the scope of the crisis, and the factors fueling it.
About Our Speakers
Alex de Waal is a Research Professor at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, and leads the WPF research programs on African Peacemaking and Mass Starvation.
Considered one of the foremost experts on the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, pandemic disease, and conflict and peace-building. His latest book is New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives. He is also author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine and The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa (Polity Press, 2015)
Following a fellowship with the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard (2004-06), he worked with the Social Science Research Council as Director of the program on HIV/AIDS and Social Transformation, and led projects on conflict and humanitarian crises in Africa (2006-09). During 2005-06, de Waal was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur and from 2009-11 served as senior adviser to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan. He was on the list of Foreign Policy’s 100 most influential public intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic Monthly’s 27 “brave thinkers” in 2009 and is the winner of the 2024 Huxley Award of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Kholood Khair is the founder and director of Confluence Advisory, a 'think and do tank' formerly based in Khartoum that works on three priority policy areas: peace and security, economy, and governance.
She is also a radio broadcaster, hosting and co-producing a weekly radio program, Spotlight 249, that is Sudan's first English-language political discussion and debate show aimed at Sudanese youth. Khair has over a decade of experience in research, aid programming and policy in Sudan and across the Horn of Africa.
She has written for Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera English, The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and other international outlets and organizations, and has been quoted widely as a political analyst in the media, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC and NPR. She has master's degrees in African Studies from the University of Oxford and in Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS University of London.
About Our Moderator
Jaspreet Gill is a foreign affairs officer at the U.S. Department of State, where she advises U.S. senior officials on U.S. diplomacy related to Afghanistan. Since 2018, she has advised on policy and programs in the State Department’s Bureau for South and Central Asian Affairs, covering the United Nations, gender and human rights, and humanitarian issues. She previously served as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF) on the UK and Ireland Desks in the Bureau of Europe and Eurasian Affairs, covering Brexit, sanctions, U.S.-Ireland economic ties, and U.S.-UK security cooperation. As a PMF, Jaspreet also served as an economic officer in the Office of Afghanistan Affairs and as the coordinator for strategic workforce planning in the Bureau of Human Resources.
Prior to becoming a PMF, Gill evaluated leadership training programs at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. Gill joined the State Department in 2012 supporting Foreign Service training workshops focused on resilience, cross cultural communication, and success overseas.
Jaspreet has a master’s degree in U.S. Foreign Policy from American University and a bachelor’s degree in history from Whitman College.
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