The Human Cost of War: Understanding the Crisis in Sudan

This event is being held virtually and is open to everyone.

Decades of political instability and disputes over power in Sudan have resulted in a calamitous civil war. In 2023, fighting erupted between rival military groups: the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The conflict has precipitated extreme violence, large-scale massacres, mass displacement, and an alarming humanitarian crisis. Now, fighting has expanded throughout most of the country, with civilians often bearing the brunt of the violence as infrastructure collapses and access to food, healthcare, and safety become scarce.

Join Global Minnesota for a conversation with Ambassador Michelle Gavin, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Senior Fellow for Africa policy studies, on the current situation in Sudan and how international actors are responding to the crisis. The discussion will be moderated by Global Minnesota Program Director Erin Hart, who served as press officer for Southern Africa and Sudan at the U.S. Department of State from 2024-2025.

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About the Speaker: Michelle D. Gavin

Michelle D. Gavin is the Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has over twenty-five years of experience in international affairs in government and non-profit roles and was formerly the managing director of The Africa Center, a multidisciplinary institution dedicated to increasing understanding of contemporary Africa. From 2011 to 2014 she was the U.S. Ambassador to Botswana and served concurrently as the U.S. Representative to the Southern African Development Community.

During Ambassador Gavin’s tenure, the United States and Botswana launched the most ambitious HIV prevention study in the world; Botswana hosted Southern Accord, the 1,400-strong joint SADC-U.S. military exercise; and the U.S. embassy helped to found Botswana’s first American Chamber of Commerce. Prior to that, she was a special assistant to President Obama and the senior director for Africa at the National Security Council, where she helped to create the Young African Leaders Initiative and led major policy reviews of Sudan and Somalia.

Previously, Ambassador Gavin was an international affairs fellow and adjunct fellow for Africa at CFR. She has also worked in the U.S. Senate, where she was the staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on African Affairs, director of international policy issues for Senator Russ Feingold, and legislative director for Senator Ken Salazar.

Gavin received an M.Phil in international relations from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes scholar, and earned her B.A. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where she was a Truman scholar. She serves on the board of directors of Points of Light.