Harvard Kennedy School panel warns of escalating atrocities in Sudan as a second genocide unfolds
Introduction
By Susan A. Hughes
December 4, 2025
Since 2023, Sudan has been embroiled in a devasting civil war. Harvard Kennedy School held a 2024 JFK Jr. Forum on the attacks by a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the Sudanese Armed Forces. Zoe Marks, the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies at Harvard and a lecture in public policy at HKS, discussed the crisis that, at the time, had led to the displacement of over 8 million people, with half the population of Sudan living in hunger and reliant on food aid.
Marks has again this month assembled a panel at the Institute of Politics’ JFK Jr. Forum to call attention to what the United Nations has described as ongoing cases of starvation, bombardment, the collapse of hospitals, and the systematic and deliberate use of rape as a weapon.
With Marks as moderator, the panelists presented diplomatic, humanitarian, medical, and scholarly views on the current crisis in Sudan: Sahar Atif, a Public Service Fellow and MC/MPA candidate at HKS, Nicholas Coghlan, Canada’s first resident diplomat in Sudan, Dr. Yasser Elamin, president of the Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPPA), and Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health.
“We do not lightly hold events here at the Kennedy School or elsewhere on campus with genocide in the title,” said Marks, wanting to also share the “grace and mercy” for the Sudanese lives as well as the ongoing atrocities.
To that point, Atif, who is also a Sudanese lawyer and human rights activist, opened the Forum with a video that showed what is beautiful about Sudan and her people.
Atif then walked the audience through the recent history from the 2018 revolution, which rejected an authoritarian regime that ruled Sudan for 30 years. “It was a rejection of fear and a strong appeal to secure our civilian government,” said Atif.
The civilian government was short-lived. It was ended with a military coup by the RSF, who continue to dominate and overwhelm regions of Sudan today. “When the RSF decided to forcefully disperse our sit-in, more than 100 peaceful protesters were killed,” said Atif. “Rape was used to scare people and a tool of oppression. It was a big disappointment for us because we felt that the international community should have interfered when the coup took place.”
Coghlan spent three years in South Sudan when it first obtained its independence. “People are amazed when I mention that in 2021 my wife and I went trekking in Darfur, one of the most beautiful, mountainous areas,” said Coghlan. “This is unimaginable now.”
He described the genesis of the RSF with the first accusation of ethnic cleansing of Darfur’s Black, African, non-Arab farmers by the “Janjaweed” militia, sometimes translated into English as “devils on horseback.”
“They were so effective in this,” Coghlan said. “A number of years later, they were formalized in Khartoum, by the central government, and given the name the Rapid Support Forces.”
Raymond has a deep history with humanitarian aid in Sudan and around the world. He is the founding director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI).
From 2010 to 2012, Raymond served as director of operations for the Satellite Sentinel Project, also at HHI. Founded by actor George Clooney, the Satellite Sentinel Project combines satellite imagery analysis and field reports with Google Map Maker to create an early warning system to deter mass atrocities by focusing world attention on the conflict and generating rapid responses on human rights and human security concerns.
Raymond explained how his unit, the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale, became engaged at the beginning of the civil war in Sudan at the request of the U.S. government.
The lab had been conducting research on the war in Ukraine for the Biden administration when the Sudanese civil war broke out. “We were brought in to assist with a Ramadan ceasefire between Sudanese armed forces and the RSF in the first month,” he said. “That first Jeddah Declaration lasted maybe 30 minutes, 2.6 seconds.”
Raymond described the escalating violence his team was able to document at the hands of the RSF; brutal, public executions of high-level officials, widespread rape of women and girls, body piles of dead men and boys, thermal plumes as whole villages are burned.
“We watched from space as they attacked like hyenas,” he said. “We assessed that the RSF was using the fighting to finish the Darfur genocide.”
The violence led to the second Darfur genocide resulting in the fall of El Fasher, the capital city of the North Darfur State.
“We had a ground network,” said Raymond. “They call us on Monday after the fall. In the morning, they said 1,200 of our family and friends are dead. By that evening, they say 10,000. By Tuesday, we never got him on the phone again.”
The current conflict in Sudan is one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the world, said Elamin. In addition to his role as president of SAPPA, Elamin is an oncologist and associate professor at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas. “There are about 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in a country where three fifths of the healthcare facilities are out of service,” he said.
Statistics he shared from a recent U.N. report were staggering: “Every nine minutes a baby in Sudan dies due to lack of medical services; 90% of Sudanese kids are out of school. It’s not just the loss of life; it’s the loss of human dignity.”
The decisions that led to these numbers, he said, are political. “Make no mistake, this is a man-made crisis. Rape is being used as a weapon. Starvation is being used as a weapon.” And while he says the Sudanese have a role in working toward understanding the national divisions and toward reconciliation, Elamin points to external actors who are fueling the war and the complacency of the international community.
“I personally believe the UAE is playing a very evil role in this conflict,” said Elamin. The United Nations and U.S. intelligence indicates that the UAE supplies arms to the RSF, although the UAE denies backing the RSF.
“I hate it when people talk about Sudan and say, ‘forgotten conflict,’” said Raymond. “It is intentionally, willfully ignored. The people who are dying right now in places like North Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan are dying because the United States, Europe, and other allies have made a choice: our diplomatic, economic, and security relations with the UAE matters more than Sudanese lives.”
Coghlan also feels the situation in Sudan is not being forgotten by the international community, rather pushed to the side. “About two weeks ago, newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was in the UAE. There was pressure on him to at least say something on behalf of Sudan,” said Coghlan. “He did not.”
Coghlan also mentioned another complicated political factor: “In Canada, our huge preoccupation right now is the relationship with the United States, and the discourse is that the U.S. is no longer a trusted partner. The UAE is not great, but we have to diversify.”
Atif returned the focus to the destruction of Sudan and the massacre of her people. “Sudanese lives matter,” she said. “The peace needs more courage than the war decision, and we hope this will end soon.”
The Forum was co-sponsored by the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights, the Center for African Studies, and the Harvard Center for International Development. It is available on the Institute of Politics YouTube channel.
Photography by Martha Stewart