Statement by Ms. Shayna Lewis
on Sudan at the UN Security Council
27 June 2025
The following statement was made by Ms. Shayna Lewis, Sudan Specialist and Senior Advisor at PAEMA, at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) open briefing on Sudan, pursuant to UNSC resolution 2715. Building on Ms. Lewis’ December 2024 testimony, this statement is a continuity of PAEMA’s sustained call for accountability and protection of civilians in Sudan.
President, Excellencies,
Thank you for the opportunity to brief you today on the situation in Sudan. My name is Shayna Lewis, I am the Sudan Specialist and Senior Advisor with PAEMA. I left Sudan less than a week ago, travelling to Port Sudan and Khartoum, and would like to share reflections and recommendations relating to the humanitarian situation, the protection of civilians, and hope for the future of Sudan.
In Sudan, up to 80% of health facilities are not working in conflict areas and health facilities have been attacked over 540 times.[i] When SAF recaptured the capital in March, many rejoiced that the war was over. But it is not over, not even in Khartoum.
I met a young girl of eight years of age at Al Nao Hospital who was shot by a stray bullet that pierced the safety of her home. She spoke to me with pins holding the shattered fragments of her leg in place. Another patient was a child in the ICU who was shot in the abdomen, also by a stray bullet. He had undergone surgery, only to develop sepsis and is now sedated on a ventilator with a 40% chance of death.
Like so many, these children suffer the consequences of violence that no child should ever have to endure. Many patients at Al Buluk and Al Nao hospitals are children requiring amputations due to playing with unexploded ordnance. Over 15 million children require humanitarian assistance,[ii] but they are also being targeted by belligerents, including through recruitment as child soldiers.[iii] UNICEF reported 16 cases of the rape of children under five, including the rape of four one-year old babies.[iv]
These are lives that have been irrevocably changed and understanding the current situation in Sudan requires a recognition of deep dichotomies, chief of which is the dichotomy between the inhumanity of armed actors who wage their war using the bodies of civilians, contrasted against the medics, community organisers, and civil society groups who show up every day risking their lives to meet the needs of their communities.
Ahmed Gasim Hospital in Bahri was one of Sudan’s major cardiac and renal transplant centres before the war. During the war, the RSF used the facility as an incinerator. They destroyed the country’s only cardiac MRI machine, dug up floors and walls to steal electrical wiring, and shot and destroyed machinery that they couldn’t carry, such as the pediatric ventilators, because the RSF wants to deprive children of the ability to breathe.
Doctors and midwives across the capital recounted working with severely limited resources: forced to operate and deliver babies by the light of their phones and facing increased mortality rates due to an inability to sterilise surgical equipment because prolonged power cuts and exhausted generators. Medics across the country are defiantly re-building amongst the ruins of war, trying to heal from the RSF’s existential threat on Sudan’s health infrastructure. They need international donors to increase funding to address systemic challenges such as critical oxygen shortages, shortages of consumables, and a lack of electricity to power hospitals.
SAF’s denial of the UN’s famine declaration[v] imperils lives as it is blocking the operationalising of the global famine response architecture. This is depriving children of necessary life-saving nutritional assistance in a country where more than 1 in 3 children are facing acute malnutrition – almost double the threshold required for a famine confirmation.[vi] Malnourished children are 11 times more likely to die than a well-nourished child.[vii] Member states must pressure SAF to end their politically-motivated denial of famine and allow the full deployment of famine response in Sudan.
As advocates, we are told to never be emotional but I am. I share my rage with so many others who confront the reality of the war in Sudan. Enraged because this tide of human suffering can only be stopped by the silencing of weapons, yet the RSF and SAF remain committed to pursuing a military solution where there is not one to be found.
Instead, we continue into the third year of this war that has caused the largest humanitarian and protection crisis in the world. We should be incensed that the Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan for 2025 is only 14% funded yet we are over halfway through the year. Global aid cuts are killing Sudanese civilians whilst the protection threats continue to escalate, especially for women and youth.
Services to prevent and address gender-based violence are the second most affected by funding cuts.[viii] Layla, a mother who was detained by the RSF told UNFPA that “[w]hen the officers left, the soldiers would begin raping prisoners. They would take young women out into the yard, and all night long we would hear the screams of girls and women.”[ix] 63% of female-led households have engaged in survival sex to access clean water during cholera outbreaks,[x] and the largest outbreaks have been in areas under SAF control.
We should all be emotional, and we should use that emotion to drive the wheels of change, to push the belligerents towards the protection of civilians and sustainable peace.
We should all be outraged that since I last spoke in this chamber barely six months ago and unequivocally stated that the RSF was continuing its genocide in Darfur, they progressed to the next stage of that campaign by killing hundreds of civilians in Zamzam, Sudan’s largest camp for displaced persons. Over 400,000 people fled for their lives.[xi] The RSF blocked the most vulnerable from leaving. Mothers who escaped returned to the camp’s borders desperate to find their lost children and were met with only further threats of violence. Where are their missing children?
We should all be furious that the RSF and SAF are only able to continue their war through the support of their respective external backers such as the UAE and Egypt. But we must also recognise the complicity of other countries around the world including some on this Council who continue to prioritise Emirati investments over the lives and blood of civilians.
Whilst the international community pursues a ceasefire, it must also champion civilian protection in Sudan. Millions of Sudanese have lacked sustained access to telecoms networks for over a year and a half. Restored and maintained telecoms access must be prioritised to ensure civilians’ access to information and mobile banking to purchase food and water. The SAF authorities should also release the telecommunications equipment that has been held at Port Sudan airport since October 2024, in demonstration of their lasting commitment to lifting Sudan’s blackout.[xii]
But instead of a commitment to protect civilians the RSF and SAF continue to find new ways of harming them whilst attempting to garner international political legitimacy. The genocidal RSF has now established a parallel government, whilst figures from former President Omar al Bashir’s banned National Congress Party have reclaimed positions of power in the east of the country.
Meanwhile, the RSF has launched Emirati-procured drone attacks against critical civilian infrastructure. The proliferation of drones, including Turkish-drones supplied to SAF and by other countries, are shifting the military frontlines in real time. The RSF is responsible for major damage to electricity and water infrastructure in the country which underpinned the most recent cholera outbreak as civilians lacked water in their homes, and many were forced to drink directly from the River Nile.[xiii]
We should be sickened that only six days ago, a suspected SAF drone targeted a hospital in West Kordofan, killing over 40 people and destroying life-saving dialysis machines that were delivered a week ago.[xiv] Across Darfur, SAF has resorted to dropping incendiary barrel bombs on civilians, killing hundreds at markets[xv] or worshipping in mosques.[xvi] All violations against civilians must stop immediately.
It is the duty of this council to do more than bear witness to war but to take action. Resolutions are just pieces of paper without the political will to implement them. We must do more to stand with the pro-peace, anti-war movement in Sudan, to amplify Sudanese voices for peace and to ensure that perpetrators of atrocity crimes face accountability and an end to the decades of impunity that Sudan’s armed elite has subsisted on.
This war is an attempt to destroy the peaceful, democratic revolution led by Sudanese youth, particularly young Sudanese women. Yet there is an audacity of spirit that cannot be crushed. Their vision of peace, justice, and freedom is not a myth. It survives in the streets of Sudan. It is alive in the doctors working in government hospitals to provide treatment for free to their communities despite not receiving salaries for over two years. It is alive in the multitude of grassroots initiatives, from the Emergency Response Rooms to community kitchens and mutual aid groups addressing the spiraling humanitarian crisis. It is alive in the little girl whose bones will heal in a few weeks, who dreams of being safe in her home, of being able to return to school, and living in peace.
Sudan cries hope, if we only dare to open our eyes and hearts to hear.
Thank you.
[i] World Health Organisation, “Public Health Situation Analysis: Sudan conflict,” (10 March 2025). https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/public-health-situation-analysis--sudan-conflict-(10-march-2025)#:~:text=Attacks%20on%20healthcare%20have%20devastated%20the%20system%2C%20with%20hundreds%20of%20incidents%20recorded%2C%20severely%20limiting%20access%20to%20medical%20care
[ii] UNICEF Sudan Humanitarian Situation Report No. 30 - April 2024 (29 May 2025). https://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/unicef-sudan-humanitarian-situation-report-no-30-april-2025
[iii] United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Sudan conflict: 24 million children exposed to a year of brutality and rights violations, UN committee says,” (18 March 2024). https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/03/sudan-conflict-24-million-children-exposed-year-brutality-and-rights
[iv] UNICEF Sudan’s Child Rape and Sexual Violence Crisis,” (March 2025), 3. https://www.unicef.org/sudan/reports/sudans-child-rape-and-sexual-violence-crisis
[v] United Nations, “Noting Famine Conditions Present in Sudan, Senior Humanitarian Official, Briefing Security Council, Stresses Need for Immediate Cessation of Hostilities,” 06 January 2025. https://press.un.org/en/2025/sc15960.doc.htm
[vi] World Food Program, “Famine in Sudan,” last accessed 26 June 2025. https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/sudan#:~:text=Over%201%20in%203%20children,across%20Sudan%20until%20November%202025.
[vii] World Health Organisation, “Sudan’s children trapped in critical malnutrition crisis, warn UN agencies,” (30 May 2024). https://www.who.int/news/item/30-05-2024-sudan-s-children-trapped-in-critical-malnutrition-crisis--warn-un-agencies
[viii] Tapiwa Gomo, “As the world looks away, women suffer in silence,” OCHA, 25 June 2025. https://www.unocha.org/news/world-looks-away-women-suffer-silence
[ix] UNFPA, “”I witnessed unimaginable horrors”: Sexual violence used as weapon of terror against women and girls across Sudan,” 02 April 2025. https://sudan.unfpa.org/en/news/%E2%80%9Ci-witnessed-unimaginable-horrors%E2%80%9D-sexual-violence-used-weapon-terror-against-women-and-girls
[x] UNFPA, “Gender-Based Violence (GBV) & the Cholera Epidemic Guidance Note for GBV Actors,” (19 June 2025). https://sudan.unfpa.org/en/publications/gender-based-violence-gbv-cholera-epidemic-guidance-note-gbv-actors
[xi] OCHA, “Sudan: Displacement from Zamzam camp, North Darfur State - Flash Update No. 3 (As of 2 May 2025),” 02 May 2025. https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/sudan/sudan-displacement-zamzam-camp-north-darfur-state-flash-update-no-3-2-may-2025
[xii] Emergency Telecommunications Cluster, “ETC Sudan Global Partners Teleconference - 04 June 2025,” 06 June 2025. https://www.etcluster.org/document/etc-sudan-global-partners-teleconference-04-june-2025
[xiii] UNICEF, “UNICEF delivers more lifesaving cholera vaccines to Sudan as deadly outbreak spreads,” 20 June 2025. https://www.unicef.org/sudan/press-releases/unicef-delivers-more-lifesaving-cholera-vaccines-sudan-deadly-outbreak-spreads
[xiv] World Health Organisation via X: https://x.com/whosudan/status/1936883487442629110
[xv] Barbara Plett Usher & Natasha Booty, “Sudan army accused of killing hundreds in airstrike on Darfur market,” BBC, 26 March 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgz5kxy8d2o
[xvi] Sudan News Sweep, “Mon 10 June ’24 (+ weekend) – Sudan News Sweep,” 11 June 2024. https://open.substack.com/pub/thesudanreport/p/mon-10-jun-24-weekend-sudan-news?r=2sxuot&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false