Over 4 Million People Have Escaped Sudan’s Ongoing Conflict – UN

According to officials from the UN’s refugee organization, more than four million individuals have been forced to escape Sudan’s civil unrest since the conflict erupted in 2023. Many of those who fled are now enduring harsh conditions, with limited access to shelter due to insufficient financial support.

“Now in its third year, the 4 million people is a devastating milestone in what is the world’s most damaging displacement crisis at the moment,” U.N. refugee agency spokesperson Eujin Byun told a Geneva press briefing.

She warned, “If the conflict continues in Sudan, thousands more people, we expect thousands more people will continue to flee, putting regional and global stability at stake.”

Sudan, which plunged into internal warfare in April 2023, is geographically connected to seven neighboring nations: Egypt, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.

Chad alone has taken in over 800,000 people escaping the violence, and conditions there remain critical. Limited funding has worsened the situation, with only a fraction of the needed support received—just 14% of financial appeals have been fulfilled, according to Dossou Patrice Ahouansou of the refugee agency.

“This is an unprecedented crisis that we are facing. This is a crisis of humanity. This is a crisis of … protection based on the violence that refugees are reporting,” he said.

Ahouansou recounted stories of severe trauma and violence faced by those displaced. He described meeting a child in Chad—a seven-year-old girl who had suffered severe injuries during an assault on the Zamzam displacement camp.

The same incident claimed the lives of her father and two brothers. During the journey to safety, she had to undergo a leg amputation. Her mother, he added, had already been lost in a previous attack.

Additional survivors shared haunting accounts of their escape. Armed militias reportedly seized their animals and, in the chaos, forced them to transport injured or elderly family members in makeshift carts as they fled the country.