The ongoing catastrophe in Sudan stands as the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today. There are no exceptions. An amplifying paraphrase needn't be added. Sudan, geographically largest of African nations, bears this ghastly distinction with terrible clarity.
Numbers tell only part of the story, but they are sufficient for the moment.
A carefully assembled set of data from the US Committee for Refugees shows that almost 2 million human beings have perished in the most recent phase of SudanUs ongoing civil war. As many as 5 million refugees have been created, making the refugee problem alone the greatest of its kind in the world. And at the height of last summer's famine, Doctors Without Borders estimates that well over 2 million more human beings, mainly children, were at risk of starvation. Within Washington all who care about Sudan know that the key decisions about what sort of priority to give this crisis long ago left the desk of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice. Certainly she, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Samuel Berger of the National Security Council, should have spoken out forcefully by now.