As Sudan approaches its third anniversary of the conflict that began on April 15, 2023, the country is engulfed in a deepening humanitarian crisis marked by mass displacement, collapsing health services, rising malnutrition and growing protection risks for women and children, with aid workers warning that the scale of need now far exceeds the available response.

Over the past three years since the conflict broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, more than 12 million people have been displaced, with 34 million people — about two-thirds of Sudan's total population — left in need of humanitarian support, marking the world's biggest humanitarian crisis, according to the International Rescue Committee.

Survivors' testimonies and humanitarian agencies describe a region where families continue to flee violence, struggle to access food and clean water, and confront severe shortages of medical care amid repeated waves of displacement.

"The humanitarian situation in Darfur, and in Sudan in general, is extremely dire," said Ali Almohammed, emergency health manager at Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, describing a crisis defined by "the collapse of protection for civilians, displacement, destruction of health services, and a level of unmet medical and humanitarian need".

He said women and children remain among the most vulnerable, facing heightened risks from disease, malnutrition, violence and lack of access to essential care as the conflict grinds on.

For many families, the danger does not end when they escape the front lines. Women and girls continue to face insecurity on roads, in markets, in fields and inside displacement camps, even in areas where fighting has shifted elsewhere, according to a report released by MSF on March 30.

"Every day, when people go to the market, there are four or five cases of rape. When we go to the farm, this happens," said a 40-year-old woman from Jebel Marra in Sudan, as quoted in the report.

MSF said that survivors urgently need confidential clinical care, treatment of injuries, emergency contraception, prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, child protection services and functioning referral pathways.

Almohammed said that as Sudan marks another year of conflict, humanitarian agencies are calling for increased international support to expand lifesaving assistance and restore protection for civilians, warning that without urgent action, the crisis in Sudan will continue to deepen.