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Something Just Shifted in Sudan — And It Shows
The UK's role in failing Sudan goes beyond arming the UAE - they factored in a price on the lives of the Sudanese people too. Right, so they’ll tell you Sudan is a tragedy. That it is distant, unfortunate, chaotic, one of those conflicts the world can’t quite get a grip on. But that’s not true. Sudan is not a tragedy. It is, at least in part, an accounting decision. The UK cut its aid budget back in in 2020. Folded Department for International Development into the Foreign Office. Scattered the people who know how to stop mass killings before they start. And when Sudan fell in 2023, when the Rapid Support Forces were burning homes in Geneina and the likes of Human Rights Watch was calling it ethnic cleansing, the Foreign Office sat down and looked at four options. One of those options was civilian protection. But they decided to say balls to that and picked the cheapest one instead. Because the question was never “How do we stop this?” The question asked instead was “What’s the price of Sudanese lives?” And they priced them out accordingly. Right, so back in 2020 the UK government cut the foreign aid budget from 0.7 per cent of national income to 0.5 per cent. It was presented as a financial adjustment, a necessary step due to economic pressure, more cuts, more austerity as we’ve become sick and tired of here, all framed in the language of responsibility and tightening belts, we’re all in this together and all of that chuff, but the effect was structural and long-term. Billions of pounds were removed from the systems designed to prevent and mitigate humanitarian collapse. This was not a single-year measure that snapped back. It became the new baseline, a new normal, a quiet reduction in capacity to act before v*olence escalates. It did not make headlines in the language of crisis. It made headlines as policy, cutting foreign aid was made to sound reasonable, better them than us. And policy feels bloodless in the moment it is announced. But policy is what determines whether, three years later, civilians live or die when a state fractures.
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By Damien WilleyThe UK's role in failing Sudan goes beyond arming the UAE - they factored in a price on the lives of the Sudanese people too. Right, so they’ll tell you Sudan is a tragedy. That it is distant, unfortunate, chaotic, one of those conflicts the world can’t quite get a grip on. But that’s not true. Sudan is not a tragedy. It is, at least in part, an accounting decision. The UK cut its aid budget back in in 2020. Folded Department for International Development into the Foreign Office. Scattered the people who know how to stop mass killings before they start. And when Sudan fell in 2023, when the Rapid Support Forces were burning homes in Geneina and the likes of Human Rights Watch was calling it ethnic cleansing, the Foreign Office sat down and looked at four options. One of those options was civilian protection. But they decided to say balls to that and picked the cheapest one instead. Because the question was never “How do we stop this?” The question asked instead was “What’s the price of Sudanese lives?” And they priced them out accordingly. Right, so back in 2020 the UK government cut the foreign aid budget from 0.7 per cent of national income to 0.5 per cent. It was presented as a financial adjustment, a necessary step due to economic pressure, more cuts, more austerity as we’ve become sick and tired of here, all framed in the language of responsibility and tightening belts, we’re all in this together and all of that chuff, but the effect was structural and long-term. Billions of pounds were removed from the systems designed to prevent and mitigate humanitarian collapse. This was not a single-year measure that snapped back. It became the new baseline, a new normal, a quiet reduction in capacity to act before v*olence escalates. It did not make headlines in the language of crisis. It made headlines as policy, cutting foreign aid was made to sound reasonable, better them than us. And policy feels bloodless in the moment it is announced. But policy is what determines whether, three years later, civilians live or die when a state fractures.