The attacks on refugee camps in Sudan have raised what is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis to a new level.

The recent attacks on camps in western Dafur have seen hundreds of people killed and tens of thousands of already displaced persons forced to flee again.

The United Nation’s International Organisation has said that up to 400,000 people had been displaced from the Zamzam camp alone.

The attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) come as the conflict enters its third year, with aid agencies and the UN saying the country is ‘worse off than ever before’ with wide-scale displacement and hunger.

Ironically, then attacks came as the UK hosted ministers from 20 countries in London in an attempt to restart stalled peace talks – largely sidelined by other crises, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Two years to the day since fighting began in Khartoum between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the attacks on the camps represent the latest atrocity of a war marked by brutality and a massive humanitarian catastrophe.

The conflict has been devastating for Sudan’s 51 million people. Tens of thousands are reportedly dead, hundreds of thousands face hunger and almost 13 million people have been displaced – 4 million of them in neighbouring countries.

UNHCR chief Filipo Grandi has made an impassioned plea for support to end the conflict and provide humanitarian support.

“Sudan is bleeding. Its people have been suffering for too long. Civilians are being bombed every day. Millions are trapped between conflict, neglect and the dilemma of flight,” Mr Grandi said.

“Two years of war have created what is now the world’s worst humanitarian and displacement crisis, intensified by extreme cuts to international aid. In the past few days, we have seen brutal attacks on vulnerable people in North Darfur.

“Aid workers were among those killed. These are flagrant violations of humanitarian law.

“The Sudanese are besieged on all sides – war, widespread abuses, indignity, hunger and other hardships. And they face indifference from the outside world, which for the past two years has shown scant interest in bringing peace to Sudan or relief to its neighbours,” he said.

Mr Grandi said the even for people who had found relative security in neighbouring countries funding shortfalls meant continuing suffering.

“Funding shortfalls mean we will struggle to alleviate the suffering. Supplies of food and medicine are dwindling. Shelter is already rudimentary. We cannot move refugees to safer areas,” he said.

“It’s not just the Sudanese who have become invisible. The world has largely turned its back on the countries and communities that have taken in so many refugees.

“Chad has scarce resources yet has allowed refugees to seek safety on its territory. A huge number – 1.5 million – have fled to Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese, themselves once refugees, have returned to escape the violence in Sudan, only to find their homeland again on the brink of war.

“The stability of the entire region is threatened. There is not just an urgent need for humanitarian protection, but also for development aid so that host governments can offer refugees and their own people better futures. They need an investment in peace, prosperity and stability, and they need it now.

“Sudanese refugees are arriving in Uganda and traversing through Libya – making journeys fraught with danger – to Europe. These refugees need and deserve their basic rights – to safety and dignity, to education and employment, to health and housing, to peace. Many have made these journeys in search of those rights, and many more will follow suit.

“After two years of unrelenting suffering, the world can no longer afford to ignore this emergency. We must make every effort to bring peace to Sudan. Humanitarian and development support must be stepped up. Continuing to look away will have catastrophic consequences,” Mr Grandi said. 

In a statement the UN rights chief, Volker Türk, said the “large-scale attacks … made starkly clear the cost of inaction by the international community, despite my repeated warnings of heightened risk for civilians in the area”.

“The attacks have exacerbated an already dire protection and humanitarian crisis in a city that has endured a devastating RSF siege since May last year,” he said.

El Fasher is one of the areas in Darfur where a famine, affecting about 637,000 people, has been declared. Almost half the 50-million population of Sudan – 24.6 million people – do not have enough food.

World Food Program spokesperson Leni Kinzli told the Londin conference that other conflicts, as well as a lack of access for journalists, and Sudan’s relative international isolation since the days of the regime of the ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir had meant Sudan was not getting the attention it needed.

“We don’t see the level of international attention on Sudan as we do for other crises,” she said.

“There should not be a competition between crises. But unfortunately, we’re seeing with everything going on in the world, other conflicts, other humanitarian crises and other things making headlines, that unfortunately Sudan is ignored.”