Gold and guns: How the 'economics of war' fuels humanitarian crisis

For the past three years, Sudan’s war has killed more than 150,000 people. It’s pushed 33 million into need of humanitarian assistance and plunged parts of the country into famine. But even as the human toll has mounted, the conflict has created a web of winners: foreign and domestic players profiting from violence. That dynamic sits at the center of the International Rescue Committee’s annual emergency watchlist, which identifies the 20 countries at greatest risk of worsening humanitarian crises in the year ahead. For the third year in a row, Sudan topped the list — a reflection of not just the scale of suffering, but the complications of a profit-powered war. “Profit from conflict is being legitimized and normalized. Sudan is a case study, as gold and natural resources fuel the conflict,” said David Miliband, IRC’s president and CEO, at the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday. “The new economics of war are a feature of the watchlist this year — probably for the first time.” In Sudan, that’s materialized through the trade of gold and guns. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, that’s taken the form of rebel groups taxing the mineral trade — and earning $800,000 every month from doing so. And in the Sahel, that’s played out through armed groups trafficking goods across borders, creating an economy “built on violence.” Those are just three of 61 conflicts recorded in 2024, the report states — more than at any point since World War II. “Conflict has become a sophisticated, multibillion dollar global industry,” reads IRC’s watchlist, which was published on Tuesday. “In many cases, external powers seeking to amass influence and money supercharge these networks by intervening in other countries’ civil wars, selling weapons to and buying resources from parties to the conflicts, which has increased the number of countries involved in wars beyond their borders to record levels.” It’s why IRC’s first recommendation of the watchlist is to dismantle “conflict economies” through targeted sanctions, anti-money laundering tools, and other international financial pressures. The report calls out the United Arab Emirates’ alleged role in backing the Rapid Support Forces, one of the two militias involved in Sudan’s conflict — something that the UAE has repeatedly denied. “The internationalization of so-called internal conflict is obviously a feature of new geopolitics,” said Miliband, who also served as the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary from 2007 to 2010. “Every single neighbor of Sudan has chosen a side — and there are, by the way, more than two sides — and a number of countries across the Middle East are also choosing sides.” But as war becomes more lucrative, aid is becoming scarcer. Throughout the year, the world’s largest donor governments have pulled back an estimated $31.1 billion in aid — deepening the gap between the scale of suffering and the world’s willingness to respond. It’s a drop that, in large part, is due to the collapse of the U.S. Agency for International Development, along with aid cuts from Germany, France, and the United Kingdom — though the ripple effect has been felt across the world. Miliband noted that his own organization has lost $400 million and 6,000 staff in less than a year — and for countries such as Ethiopia, those losses have been devastating. The East African nation lost $387 million of USAID funding this year, the report found, the largest cut on the African continent. That’s led to the disruption of food programs, the dismissal of health workers, and a fracturing of humanitarian response systems — all in the fourth most at-risk country on IRC’s watchlist, preceded only by Sudan, the Palestinian territories, and South Sudan. “How do we shift the balance from retreat to recommitment when it comes to the future of aid?” said Miliband. “We are in a new era of aid; we shouldn’t ignore that.”