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 21, 2025.
Humanitarian Needs
30.4 million people need humanitarian assistance in Sudan—over 15 million are children. Communities have been destroyed, health services have collapsed, famine has been confirmed in five locations, and warring parties continue to obstruct aid.
In December 2024, the Famine Review Committee (FRC) concluded that Famine (IPC Phase 5) was present in Zamzam, Abu Shouk, and Al Salam camps, as well as in the Western Nuba Mountains. The FRC projected that famine would continue in those areas and expand in the North Darfur localities of Um Kadadah, Melit, El Fasher, At Tawisha, and Al Lait. Risk of famine remains extremely high in other areas of Sudan, such as in Al Jazirah and Khartoum states.
Humanitarian needs in North Darfur sharply escalated following the April 2025 attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied groups on Zamzam and Abu Shouk displacement camps. The attacks killed hundreds and forced 400,000-450,000 people to flee. On April 20, United Nations (UN) Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan Clementine Nkweta-Salami detailed the “critical and intensifying operational challenges in North Darfur State, driven by the forced and large-scale displacement of civilians away from established infrastructure and humanitarian services.” She stressed that displaced populations were “increasingly cut off from supply chains and assistance, placing them at heightened risk of epidemic outbreaks, malnutrition and famine.”
Over 24 million people face high levels of acute food insecurity in Sudan, and the situation is projected to worsen this year.
The UN has accused both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF of using starvation as a weapon of war. This year, children in the Nuba Mountains were described as “reduced to skin and bones.” In the Hajr al-Jawad camp in the Western Nuba Mountains, aid stopped coming and the SAF were accused of deliberately blocking aid from reaching the region. Here, starvation has silenced children—a silence said to only be broken by occasional high-pitched cries, children too weak to move.
On March 21, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) condemned the looting of lifesaving humanitarian supplies meant for malnourished children at Al Bashair Hospital in Jabal Awlia, Khartoum. This included at least 2,200 cartons of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), which in turn put the lives of over 2,000 severely malnourished children at risk.
As hunger spreads, so does disease. A cholera outbreak in Kosti, White Nile State resulted in over 2,243 cases reported to Sudan’s Ministry of Health from February 20 to February 26—nearly 400 cases every day. At least 70 people were confirmed to have died. After a drone strike damaged the town’s power facility, communities were forced to consume contaminated water from the White Nile River, which was believed to have caused the outbreak.
Malaria and dengue fever have also plagued communities. On April 15, UNICEF reported that “in 2024 alone, 49,000 cholera cases and more than 11,000 cases of dengue fever were reported—60 percent affecting mothers and children.” Less than a quarter of health facilities function in Sudan’s worst-affected areas—they are overstrained and unable to respond and treat the level of need.
The people of Sudan have been pushed into greater suffering following cuts to foreign aid by donor governments.
Most recently, the startling halt and cut to humanitarian assistance by the United States left both international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as UN agencies in crippling funding lapses. On March 9, the Sudan INGO Forum released a statement on the impacts of U.S. grant terminations, noting that for women, children, and other vulnerable groups in Sudan, the impacts “will likely be apocalyptic.” In war-ridden regions throughout Sudan, displaced populations rely heavily on aid for survival. The decision by the U.S. Government caused the closure of hundreds of emergency food kitchens in Sudan in a matter of days.
Widespread ramifications of aid cuts have not only hit within Sudan, but also in neighboring countries grappling with an influx of Sudanese refugees. On March 18, the New York Times reported on the calamitous impacts felt in the Aboutengue Camp in Chad, mostly for women and children. Survivors of SGBV, thousands of students, and people in need of medical care—all impacted by aid cuts from the United States.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “reducing America’s humanitarian role would have far-reaching consequences, not only for those in need but also for global stability.” Guterres urged the United States to reconsider its funding cuts. On March 10, a statement from the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan called the cuts by top government donors “a catastrophic blow to humanitarian assistance in Sudan, a country in the grip of one of the deadliest humanitarian crises of our times.”
USCRI, founded in 1911, is a non-governmental, not-for-profit international organization committed to working on behalf of refugees and immigrants and their transition to a dignified life.
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