More than four million people have fled Sudan since the start of the conflict in 2023, the United Nations said Tuesday, calling the figure a “devastating milestone”.
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said that if the war continues, the outflow of people would threaten regional and global stability.
Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a battle for power since April 2023.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
“Four million people now have fled Sudan into neighbouring countries since the start of the war, now in it’s third year,” UNHCR spokeswoman Eujin Byun said at a press briefing in Geneva.
“It’s a devastating milestone in what is the world’s most damaging displacement crisis,” she added.
“If the conflict continues, thousands more people will continue to flee, putting regional and global stability at stake.”
UNHCR figures showed that 4,003,385 people had fled Sudan as refugees, asylum seekers, and returnees as of Monday.
Of those, 1.5 million have fled to Egypt; more than 1.1 million to South Sudan, including nearly 800,000 returnees who had been refugees themselves in Sudan; and more than 850,000 to Chad.
– Strain on neighbouring Chad –
The UNHCR described a deepening humanitarian emergency in eastern Chad, where the number of Sudanese refugees has more than tripled since the war broke out.
The country was already hosting more than 400,000 Sudanese refugees before the conflict began, and the figure has now surpassed 1.2 million.
This is placing “unsustainable pressure on Chad’s ability to respond”, said Dossou Patrice Ahouansou, UNHCR’s principal situation coordinator in Chad, speaking from Amdjarass in the country’s east.
He said there had been an influx across the border since late April following violent attacks in Sudan’s North Darfur region, including assaults on displacement camps.
In just over a month, 68,556 refugees have arrived in Chad’s Wadi Fira and Ennedi Est provinces, with an average of 1,400 people crossing the border daily in recent days, he said.
“These civilians are fleeing in terror, many under fire, navigating armed checkpoints, extortion, and tight restrictions imposed by armed groups,” Ahouansou said.
He said the emergency response was “dangerously underfunded”, with people living in “dire” shelter conditions, and tens of thousands exposed to extreme weather, insecurity and water shortages.
UNHCR said there was an “urgent need” for the international community “to acknowledge, and act to eradicate, the grave human rights abuses being endured in Sudan”.
“Without a significant increase in funding, life-saving assistance cannot be delivered at the scale and speed required,” Ahouansou said.
The war has effectively split Sudan in two, with the army holding the centre, east and north, while the paramilitaries and their allies control nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
