Six months into the civil conflict in Sudan, conditions have deteriorated to a degree where over half the population is in dire need of help. The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has deeply fractured the country on almost every level. Over 6 million people have been forced from their homes, the majority displaced internally and others having fled the country altogether. Local activists say that attention from international non-governmental organizations is dwindling, malnutrition is rampant and Doctors Without Borders has warned that the country’s medical sector is on the verge of collapse. And as desperate as the situation is in Sudan, there are fears that the conflict will spill over its borders to other, vulnerable countries, which would exponentially increase the violence and the scale of the humanitarian disaster.
Please join us for a discussion on the conflict in Sudan and its international ramifications.
Speakers
Jehanne Henry
Non-Resident Scholar, Middle East Institute;Former Director, Africa Division, Human Rights Watch
Kholood Khair
Founding Director, Confluence Advisory
Lina Raafat
Programme Officer, Cairo International Center for Conflict Resolution, Peacekeeping, and Peacebuilding
Mirette F. Mabrouk, moderator
Senior Fellow and Founding Director, Egypt and the Horn of Africa Program, Middle East Institute
Detailed Speaker Bios
Jehanne Henry
Jehanne Henry is a human rights lawyer and researcher with a particular focus on Sudan and South Sudan. She is a former director in the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, responsible for work on Sudan and South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, Chad and Mali. She left the organization in late 2020 to be an adviser in Sudan’s transitional government’s ministry of justice. Since late 2021, she has worked with various human rights organizations in Africa’s East, Horn and Sahel regions. Previously Henry was a human rights officer with the United Nations Mission in in Darfur; a human rights specialist with USAID in Cambodia; a legal adviser in the United Nations Mission in Kosovo; and a legal aid program manager with the American Refugee Committee in Kosovo.
Khlood Khair
Kholood Khair (@KholoodKhair) is founding director of Confluence Advisory, a policy ‘think-and-do’ tank based in Khartoum, Sudan. She is a policy and political analyst, current events commentator and radio broadcaster. She hosts and co-produces a weekly radio program, Spotlight 249 on Capital FM in Sudan, that is aimed primarily at young people. She is experienced in projects aimed at fostering dialogue, building democracy and improving women’s rights. After the 2019 popular uprising in Sudan, Kholood served as senior advisor on a project of Switzerland’s Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue to support a peaceful and inclusive transition.
Mirette F. Mabrouk
Mirette F. Mabrouk is an MEI senior fellow and founding director of the Institute's Egypt Studies program. She was previously deputy director and director for research and programs at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council. Formerly a fellow at the Project for U.S. Relations with the Middle East at the Brookings Institution, Mabrouk moved to D.C. from Cairo, where she was director of communications for the Economic Research Forum (ERF). Before being appointed associate director for publishing operations at The American University in Cairo Press, Ms. Mabrouk had over 20 years of experience in both print and television journalism.
Lina Rafat
Lina Raafat previously served as Deputy Research Director at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) where she led a $3.4M multi-year project studying the tactics of the violent extremist nexus for online media radicalization and audience susceptibility. She also briefed policy-makers and key stakeholders at the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense on strategic threat messaging by high-impact extremist actors. Lina currently focuses on understanding the interlinkages between Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration and preventing extremism conducive to terrorism in Africa.
Photo by Samir Bol/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images