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.
Henry has authored dozens of reports, opinion pieces, and articles on justice and human rights issues in Africa and has appeared in dozens of international media outlets. She has also taught seminars on human rights topics at Hunter College (City University of New York), Columbia University, and guest-lectured at numerous other universities and institutions.
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. She has also worked in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, clerked for a US federal judge, and is admitted to the New York state bar.
After the Rapid Support Forces’ seizure of al-Fashir, the capital of the North Darfur State and the last remaining stronghold of the Sudanese army, the conflict in Sudan has once again drawn international attention. This development is the latest in a devastating civil war that has lasted over two years. MEI’s Jehanne Henry unpacks the origins of the conflict, the humanitarian situation on the ground, and what needs to happen in the future.
Two years on, Sudan’s war seems further than ever from resolution. Can US involvement help peace efforts?
Two years on, the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and wrought terrible destruction.
The worst forgotten conflict in the world: Sudan’s civil war one year on
This week marks one year of Sudan’s brutal civil war, when the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) started battling in the capital city of Khartoum. Far from silencing their guns, the two sides continue to fight fiercely to devastating effect; and with scant global attention or outcry, the Sudanese war has quickly become the world’s worst forgotten conflict.
It isn’t a surprise that Sudan’s two warring sides — the Sudanese Armed Forces and its sprawling paramilitary Rapid Support Forces — did not agree to a ceasefire. When they resumed talks in Jeddah, mediated by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in late October, the RSF was busy launching a major offensive on the vast western region of Darfur.
Nearly five months on, Sudan’s war between its army and largest paramilitary force has destroyed much of Khartoum, the adjacent cities of Bahri and Omdurman, as well as key towns in Darfur. The warring forces have killed thousands of civilians, destroyed critical infrastructure, and forced a staggering 4.9 million people to flee their homes. The U.N. is providing important humanitarian assistance, but it should be doing far more, especially to advance accountability and improve coordination in the messy diplomatic arena. Both the high-level week in New York and the Human Rights Council session in Geneva present opportunities that it should not squander.
