Sudan: 14 million displaced; hunger and attacks on health continue as war enters fourth year

Speaking from Khartoum, the representative of the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, in the country Marie-Helene Verney told reporters that since the start of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 15 April 2023, some 14 million people, or a quarter of the population, have been forced to flee, with 9 million remaining displaced inside Sudan and 4.4 million across borders, primarily in Chad, South Sudan and Egypt.

“Unfortunately, we are not seeing clear progress towards any resolution,” she said, stressing that fighting is still ongoing in large parts of the country: the Kordofans, Darfur and Blue Nile State.

“One thing to note is the increased use of aerial bombardments and drone attacks,” she added.

Airstrikes, rights abuses and sexual violence

Airstrikes have been targeting civilian infrastructure “with no warnings,” Ms. Verney said, and serious human rights violations have continued, including massacres, forced recruitment and arbitrary arrests.

Women and girls are particularly at risk of conflict-related sexual violence which “often takes place when they are trying to run for safety,” she added.

In February the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said that over 500 victims of sexual violence were identified in 2025 alone, while a record 11,300 civilians were killed that year while many thousands remained missing or unidentified.

Millions going hungry

The world’s largest displacement crisis is also a hunger crisis, as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s representative in Sudan Hongjie Yang pointed out, stressing that 21 million Sudanese are now facing acute food insecurity, including 6.3 million in the most dire state of food emergency.

Rural households in conflict areas such as Darfur and the Kordofans are particularly under pressure, he said.

Food production capacities have been largely destroyed, specifically in the state of Khartoum, Mr. Yang added, while the wrecked veterinary laboratory cannot produce vaccines for livestock.

Health services “shattered”

Meanwhile essential health services in the country have been “shattered,” Dr Shible Sahbani, World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Sudan told reporters.

Over 40 per cent of the country’s population require urgent health assistance, hospitals are overflowing with patients and disease outbreaks are widespread, he said.

Access to healthcare is all the more difficult as attacks on remaining functional hospitals have rendered them non-functional.

In three years of war WHO has verified and documented more than 200 attacks on healthcare which led to 2,052 deaths, Dr Sahbani said, while health workers have been killed, injured, detained and tortured.

Middle East conflict impacts

The UN health agency official also highlighted the recent impacts of the war in the Middle East on the provision of humanitarian aid to Sudan.

“Most of the agencies, like WHO, have our main logistics hub in the United Arab Emirates and with what’s happening now, it’s really impacting our capacity to respond” as humanitarian supply routes have been cut and shipping aid has become slower and more costly.

“Fortunately, we had some supplies in the country to be able to respond immediately… but now we are using our stocks and we need additional supplies to come in,” he said.