Sudan - for the second year in a row - topped a 2025 watchlist of global humanitarian crises released by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) aid organization on Wednesday, followed by Gaza and the West Bank, Myanmar, Syria and South Sudan.
Hajj Ahmed, a resident of the Old-Omdurman neighbourhood, looks at his house after it was damaged by shells in Omdurman, Sudan, November 8, 2024. Reuters/El Tayeb Siddig
Sudan - for the second year in a row - topped a 2025 watchlist of global humanitarian crises released by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) aid organization on Wednesday, followed by Gaza and the West Bank, Myanmar, Syria and South Sudan.
The New York-based IRC began the watchlist more than 15 years ago as an internal planning tool to prepare for the year ahead, but chief executive David Miliband said it now also served as a call to action globally.
The report said 305.1 million people around the world are in humanitarian need - up from 77.9 million in 2015 - and that the 20 countries on the IRC watchlist account for 82% of them. Miliband described the numbers as "crushing."
"There are more resources to do more good for more people than at any time in history. This makes it all the more bewildering that the gap between humanitarian need and humanitarian funding is also greater than ever," he wrote in the watchlist report.
The report said the humanitarian crisis in Sudan was the largest since records began and that the country accounts for 10% of all people in humanitarian need, despite being home to just 1% of the global population.
War erupted in April 2023 from a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule, and triggered the world's largest displacement crisis.
The remaining 15 countries on the IRC watchlist are: Lebanon, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Mali, Somalia, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Niger, Nigeria, Ukraine and Yemen.
Reporting by Michelle Nichols
Human Rights Watch has accused an Abu Dhabi-based security company of recruiting Colombian private military contractors and deploying them to fight alongside Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) between 2024 and 2025, adding to what the rights group describes as a growing body of evidence of Emirati military support for the paramilitary group.
Farmers across Sudan say the hike in global fuel and fertilizer costs resulting from the Iran conflict will force them to cut back on planting this summer, restricting food production in a country where war has caused acute hunger.
At least nine people were killed and six others injured when a four-storey building collapsed overnight in the Moroccan city of Fez, about 200 kilometres (124 miles) east of Rabat, local authorities said on Thursday.
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