Men walk past street vendor stands set up beneath a damaged building in Khartoum on Wednesday.EBRAHIM HAMID/AFP/Getty Images
Canada is announcing $120-million in new assistance for Sudan and its neighbours, boosting its aid commitment from last year as global leaders gather in Berlin to push for action on the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis.
The announcement was made on Wednesday on the third anniversary of the war, which has devastated Sudan, killed hundreds of thousands, forced nearly 12 million people to flee their homes and left two-thirds of its population in urgent need of aid.
Sudan struggles for donor funds and global attention as war marks its third anniversary
The crisis in Sudan has reached “catastrophic levels,” said Randeep Sarai, Secretary of State for International Development, in a statement disclosing the new aid.
The Canadian assistance is an increase from last year, when it provided $107-million for Sudan and the neighbouring countries that have sheltered 4.5 million Sudanese refugees since the war began. But it is smaller than the $132-million that Canada provided for the crisis in 2024.
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand says Canada will increase its humanitarian and development aid for Sudan by $120-million.
The Canadian Press
Global Affairs Canada, announcing the new aid, said the Sudan emergency has “grown in scale and severity” over the past three years.
“This conflict has resulted in war crimes, the largest human displacement crisis in the world, widespread sexual violence, famine, the longest nationwide school closures globally and the collapse of basic services that are critical for people’s safety, health, protection and dignity,” it said.
The meeting in Berlin on Wednesday, the third conference of global donors since the war began, is aiming to raise about US$1-billion in humanitarian and other aid for Sudan and its neighbours.
Delegates attend the Third International Sudan Conference at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, Germany on Wednesday.Liesa Johannssen/Reuters
This would be roughly the same as the amount raised at a donor conference in London last year – but less than half of the US$2.4-billion pledged at the first conference in Paris in 2024.
Relief agencies have struggled to keep the Sudan crisis on the global agenda. Sudan has been overshadowed first by the war in Ukraine, then the Gaza war and most recently, by the Iran conflict.
Budget shortfalls have forced the United Nations to slash its food assistance in Sudan by 14 per cent this year, and the UN has raised only 16 per cent of its appeal for US$2.8-billion in aid this year. Many Western governments have cut their foreign aid budgets over the past year.
After massacres in Darfur, another Sudan region faces famine and siege
Human rights activists say the Canadian announcement is welcome, but does not go far enough. “This funding, while critical, only scratches the surface, given the magnitude of the catastrophe,” said Mutasim Ali, senior legal adviser at the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail.
His organization is calling for a much broader Canadian response to the Sudan crisis. The centre is proposing that Canada increase sanctions on Sudanese military leaders, close loopholes that allow Canadian-made weapons to reach Sudan, recognize the massacres in Darfur as a genocide, pursue Sudanese war-crimes cases in international courts at the Hague, and expand immigration pathways to reunite Sudanese-Canadian families.
The plan has been endorsed by former Canadian ambassador to the UN Bob Rae, former justice minister Irwin Cotler, University of Toronto scholar Nisrin Elamin and others.
A displaced woman rests in Tawila, in the western Darfur region, on Oct. 28, 2025, after fleeing El-Fasher.-/AFP/Getty Images