About Sudan War Monitor

Sudan is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, caused by a devastating war that began April 15, 2023. We publish news, maps, videos, and analysis about the war.

Using OSINT (open source intelligence) and journalism techniques, we document conflict events and war crimes, identify perpetrators, and give voice to victims.

We do this work because we believe that journalism is one accountability mechanism that can ultimately contribute toward peace and justice. Our work is intended to be a resource for humanitarians, peace builders, civil society, news media, international observers, and ordinary Sudanese seeking to follow the conflict.

You can follow our work by signing up our free email newsletter. We usually send out updates 2-3 times per week. Alternatively, try the Substack app for a clean and distraction-free reading experience.

You can also follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Our Twitter account is bilingual (posting in both English and Arabic), whereas the Facebook page is mostly just Arabic.

How You Can Help

We offer a paid subscription option for those who wish to support the project. Our work would not be possible without the generous contributions of our paying readers.

Our paid and free subscription options are managed by Substack, a leading U.S. technology company. Payments are securely processed by Stripe.

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Project Objectives

1. We locate and analyze conflict-related videos and crowd-sourced reports.

2. We produce occasional maps of conflict sites, events, and areas of control.

3. We bring attention to and document human rights abuses and war crimes.

4. We document reports of abuses of prisoners of war.

5. We tell the stories of conflict victims, highlighting the human toll of the war.

6. We work with outside experts in the fields of military history, peace studies, Sudan studies, and related academic fields to improve the academic understanding of the current and past wars in Sudan.

7. We collaborate with Sudanese and Arab-world media and provide information that they can republish and disseminate.

8. We work to map command structures and document the identities of commanders involved in a conflict.

Several issues are outside our project scope: politics, humanitarian affairs, post-war reconstruction planning, the economy, and international diplomacy. However, we do sometimes cover these issues to provide context, or as a secondary focus.

Sudan War Monitor does not aim to offer political solutions to the conflict or to take a position on what the post-conflict government should look like. Peace talks and political developments are only a secondary focus. However, individual analysts may have views on these issues that they are free to express within reason.

Partners

We work on an ad hoc basis with numerous open-source researchers and organizations. Additionally, we have the following formal partners:

The National Independent Mechanism for Peace Monitoring and Evaluation in Sudan (NIMPMES) is a Sudanese initiative that began after the Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) signed in October 2020. Although founded to monitor a previous peace agreement, not the current conflict, NIMPMES members are experienced in reporting on conflict and peace-building, and therefore the organization is well-placed to support the mission of Sudan War Monitor.

The OSINT Sudan Capacity Building Initiative is a collective initiative of those working in the field of open source intelligence (OSINT) to spread culture and training on techniques and methods of collecting and analyzing data gathered from open sources, including social media videos and satellite imagery.

The initiative focuses on training Sudanese in geolocation and other techniques for the public benefit. The initiative depends, for now, on self-financing provided by volunteer members. Members of the OSINT Sudan community are key contributors to Sudan War Monitor and share our goals.

Team

Sudan War Monitor exploits horizontal networks of collaboration rather than embracing a top-down, hierarchical approach to project development and implementation. Our team includes Sudanese and international journalists, analysts, volunteer translators, geolocators, and other specialists.

The project began as a volunteer initiative. Though we have raised a little money through subscriptions, with the aim of professionalizing and becoming more sustainable, most of the work is still voluntary and uncompensated.