Irish Examiner view: Ireland cannot look away from Sudan
Families from el-Fasher at a displacement camp where they sought refuge from fighting between government forces and the RSF, in Tawila, Darfur, Sudan on Friday. Picture: Norwegian Refugee Council/AP
By the happy accident of birth, nobody in Ireland lives under the threat of horrific violence at the hands of a brutal militia. Famine and rape are not weaponised and our children are not traumatised by the crackle of machine-gun fire.
In Sudan, millions of people cannot say the same.
For almost two years, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have fought a war that has emptied cities, starved communities, and turned ordinary homes into morgues. In recent weeks, reports of mass killings and sexual violence in Darfur have intensified. Hospitals have been overrun and aid convoys looted with talk of civilians slaughtered in their beds.
The UN calls Sudan the world’s worst displacement crisis. Famine is not a looming threat but a lived reality. Children are dying from hunger in camps that are little more than open-air prisons as their mothers are forced to helplessly watch. There is no dignity in this suffering — only the terror of knowing that the world sees but does not act. And Ireland, like much of the international community, has not looked closely enough.
To be clear, we are not indifferent in this country. Irish NGOs — Concern, Trócaire, Goal — are on the ground, working in the most difficult conditions imaginable.
Our Government has provided funding, as it should and must continue to do. But attention, too, is a currency in humanitarian response, and Sudan has received almost none of it. We have become a nation expert at responding to crises with verbal empathy — Gaza, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen.
However, Sudan has remained an afterthought, crowded out by geopolitical priorities and media bandwidth.
We cannot pretend that our silence has no consequence. When atrocities go unreported, they go unpunished. When civilians are ignored, they are forgotten, and forgotten people die. It is not enough to say we are overwhelmed by the world’s suffering — a wealthy, rights-based European democracy cannot pick and choose which atrocities count.
The horror in Sudan is not lesser because the victims live far from Irish shores or because their pain lacks social-media traction. Worse still, this is not simply a civil war, it is a conflict in which outside powers have played a decisive role.
Among the most troubling allegations are those concerning the United Arab Emirates — a state heavily courted for investment, diplomatic partnership, and sun-holiday convenience by European nations, including our own.
The UAE denies that it has supplied arms and logistical support to the RSF, the militia accused of ethnic cleansing and mass sexual violence in Darfur.
Yet multiple independent investigations — from UN panels to human-rights organisations — have traced weapons and supply routes back to Emirati channels.
If it is proven that a state upon which Ireland and Europe increasingly rely has facilitated war crimes, we cannot look away. We cannot keep treating Gulf money as clean by default and Gulf bloodshed as somebody else’s problem. We cannot applaud ribbon-cuttings in Dubai while ignoring mass graves in El-Fasher.
Being a republic means more than holding elections. It means choosing principle over convenience — even when the sun is shining in Abu Dhabi and the hotel deals are excellent. Ireland is listened to not because of our military strength or economic muscle, but because we have known oppression, famine, displacement.
Our passport carries moral weight earned, not bought. So let us use it.
We should lead European calls for a full, independent inquiry into external support for armed groups in Sudan.
We should push for stronger monitoring of arms flows and sanctions against any entity found complicit in atrocities. We should expand humanitarian funding and support safe-corridor negotiations for aid.
And we should give Sudan the media space and political urgency its catastrophe demands.
Above all, we should remember what it means to be human in the face of inhumanity. If we are proud of the values we teach our children — fairness, decency, care for the vulnerable — then Sudan must matter to us.
Not later — now.
The people enduring this nightmare were born into it by chance, just as we were born into safety by chance.
The moral difference lies in what we do with that luck. To look away is a luxury — to care is a duty. To act is the minimum requirement of a civilised nation.
Sudan is calling on the conscience of the world.
Ireland must not be among those who pretend not to hear.
News reports at the time told of audiences stunned and moved — many finding the film altogether overwhelming, especially because the scenes of devastation it depicted evoked memories of Nagasaki and Hiroshima that still crippled a nation.
Godzilla, the original, was an allegory on nuclear apocalypse that morphed — through various iterations — into slapstick horror. Whatever its message, its very existence speaks to the profound power of community that the simple act of going to the movies can instill.
"When you sit in the dark with strangers and watch a story unfold," actor Gabriel Byrne told the magazine on Saturday, “you’re reminded that there’s more that connects us than divides us.”
He was speaking ahead of the 70th Cork International Film Festival which takes place from Thursday this week until Sunday November 16 at various cinematic sanctuaries across the city.
The movie industry has — like Godzilla — evolved, surviving the slings and arrows of an ever-changing landscape.
This week’s celebration of cinema is an opportunity to rediscover the allure of disappearing into a make-believe world, and to be a part of a quiet community that still puts art above distraction, insisting that a story deserves the dignity of a dark room, shared breath, and undivided minds.
Read More
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
