On April 15, 2025, Sudan entered its third year of war. The following snapshot uses information from USCRI’s April 2025 Sudan Situation Update, as well as information as of April 16, 2025.
The Largest Displacement Crisis in the World
There are over 11.3 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Sudan. Over 8 million of these IDPs were displaced after war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on April 15, 2023. In addition to those displaced in Sudan, over 3.9 million people fled across borders, seeking refuge in neighboring countries.
Sudan is the largest displacement crisis in the world. Sudan is also the largest child displacement crisis in the world.
More than half of those displaced are children, and one in three are under five years old.
On April 15, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) reported that, during the second year of war in Sudan, the number of IDPs increased by 13 percent and the number of people displaced across borders nearly doubled from the first year of war.
Schools and bus stops in Sudan have been converted into overcrowded displacement sites, where thousands of people are forced to live unsheltered. They are without sanitation facilities, and often with little to no food and clean water. The United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) detailed how in Gedaref, about six hours from Sudan’s capital of Khartoum, a former bus station now serves as an IDP settlement hosting around 6,600 people.
Most of Sudan’s neighboring countries have received large influxes of people fleeing violence—both Sudanese nationals and those who were refugees in
Sudan before the war began. In its March 23 Mobility Update, IOM’s DTM recorded that the majority of cross-border movement was into Egypt (1,514,827 people), South Sudan (1,100,342 people), and Chad (984,067 people). Ethiopia, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Libya also received many displaced people from Sudan.
Warring parties have perpetrated targeted attacks on displaced populations in Sudan, often forcing them to flee multiple times over. On April 11 and 12, at least 300 people were massacred in Sudan’s famine-stricken Zamzam and Abu Shouk displacement camps in reported attacks by the RSF and allied groups. On April 16, Save the Children detailed the situation for thousands of families who arrived in the town of Tawila after fleeing the attacks in Zamzam and Abu Shouk. The organization reported that the new arrivals, including thousands of children, were “injured, traumatized, and with no food or water…” They had witnessed horrific physical violence and many of the displaced children were unaccompanied or separated from their parents—lost in the chaos of the attacks. These people had already been living in famine conditions in the camps for almost eight months and had been cut off from food supplies and essential services.
Rapid forced displacement and extreme levels of violence have caused people to lose everything, leaving them fully dependent on dwindling humanitarian aid as they now face the unimaginable task of rebuilding their lives amid active war, devastation, hunger, and profound loss.
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