New Report on Darfur: Rivers of Blood – Escaping Darfur

On 27 November 2025, our patron, Lord Alton of Liverpool, will speak during a short debate in the UK House of Lords, raising the dire situation in Darfur, Sudan. Among others, he will discuss the findings of a new report on Darfur – Rivers of Blood – Escaping Darfur – launched by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan and South Sudan.

In the foreword of the report, Lord Alton writes:

We Cannot Say We Did Not Know

Several decades have passed since the world first began to speak of atrocities in Darfur. At that time, the international community pledged such horrors would not be allowed to recur. And yet, as this Report shows, mass displacement, ethnic persecution, and targeted violence have returned with devastating force.

I travelled to the region with Rebecca Tinsley, President and Founder of Waging Peace, twenty years ago. Survivors told us how their villages had been destroyed, their families murdered, and their livelihoods ruined. Many of the testimonies we heard then are echoed here. What strikes me now is how many of those same communities, or their children, remain trapped in cycles of displacement and despair.

The findings of this Report, based on fieldwork in eastern Chad, reveal the suffering millions now endure. History has not moved on for those forced from their homes. For many, exile and precarity remain daily realities. The Adré transit camp alone hosts over 240,000 people, an entire city of the dispossessed. As the Report notes, “their futures are suspended. And the longer this crisis drags on without meaningful intervention, the more likely it is that suffering will harden into permanence”.

This is not a distant tragedy but a present emergency. Refugees arrive traumatised and bereaved. Many are women and children, bearing the burdens of displacement, hunger, and violence. As one refugee mother recalled: “El Geneina was like a little paradise…Now THE RIVERS OF DARFUR RUN WITH BLOOD”. Such testimony is harrowing, but it must be heard. Silence and indifference are accomplices to atrocity.

The crisis also exposes the weakness of our humanitarian response. Adré was never designed to host such numbers, nor for so long. By mid-2025, the United Nations’ refugee plan for Chad was only 4.7% funded. No community can survive with dignity under such conditions.

It is not enough to lament Sudan’s violence or the misery of those now across the border. The test is whether we act with resolve to protect the vulnerable, to insist on accountability, and to sustain those rebuilding their lives in exile. Justice matters too. Impunity for those who orchestrate ethnic cleansing ensures such crimes will be repeated.

If displacement is to become a long-term reality, policies must adjust. Camps cannot remain holding pens of despair; they must become places where people can live, learn, and recover until durable solutions are found.

I am struck too by the courage and generosity of those who carry the heaviest burdens. Host communities in Chad, themselves poor and marginalised, have welcomed vast numbers of refugees. Humanitarian aid workers – Chadian and international – labour under immense strain. Refugees show extraordinary resilience too. They care for one another with the most limited means. Their solidarity must be matched by our own, now and urgently.

For over four decades in Parliament and beyond, I have sought to draw attention to persecuted and marginalised communities – from Darfur to Iraq, Nigeria, Xinjiang, and Myanmar. My motivation has always been the same: to stand alongside those silenced and to urge governments and institutions to match words with deeds.

This Report is written in that spirit.

It also reflects the consistent work of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan and South Sudan, which for many years has provided a cross-party platform to bear witness to these crises and press for action. In that context, I wish to pay tribute to the late JOHN MONTAGU, 11th Earl of Sandwich, who served as a key leader of the Group for over two decades. His wisdom, compassion, and tireless advocacy for the people of Sudan and South Sudan remain an enduring example to us all.

This Report does not set out a technical blueprint. Instead, it gives voice to the displaced and marginalised. It challenges us not to consign Darfur and its people to the footnotes of international concern. The atrocities described here echo those of twenty years ago, but the question is whether the world will respond differently this time. The Report demands a long-term strategy because ” the scale of human need demands a response that goes beyond tents and rations”. That demand is backed up by firsthand accounts that are harrowing, compelling, and urgent.

We cannot say we did not know. The evidence is here. The voices are here. The responsibility is ours.

– THE LORD ALTON OF LIVERPOOL KCSG KCMCO

The report can be found here