Thousands of families have fled renewed fighting in Sudan's North Kordofan State, a vast region in central Sudan, adding to what the International Organization for Migration (IOM) describes as one of the world's largest displacement crises. Mothers and children — many in acute need of food and medical care — are arriving at already overwhelmed camps in El Obeid, North Kordofan's provincial capital, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge. Long queues for food have become a daily reality in a camp system stretched far beyond its capacity.
The IOM's most recent figures show that an escalation in fighting has pushed an additional 200,000 people from their homes, piling further pressure on a humanitarian situation that was already catastrophic. The agency's director-general, Amy Pope, warned that warning signs cannot be ignored. "Across Sudan, families are fleeing violence, losing access to water, electricity and healthcare, and now face the added burden of devastating floods," she said, stressing that without urgent action to protect civilians and restore basic services, suffering will only deepen. Sudan now has an estimated 8.6 million internally displaced people, with a further roughly 13 million people uprooted in total since the war began.
The crisis is compounded by seasonal rains that have brought destructive flooding on top of the violence. In North Darfur, heavy rainfall in the Tawila area recently destroyed or damaged around 1,350 homes, displacing more than a thousand families. Children have emerged as particularly visible victims in North Kordofan, exposed to bombardment, explosive remnants of war and other violations. Separately, more than 5,000 displaced people from the Qaysan area have arrived in Ad Damazin, in Blue Nile State in southeastern Sudan, suffering acute shortages of food, medicine and shelter.
The war, now in its fourth year, erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. It has killed tens of thousands of people, triggered what aid agencies rank among the worst humanitarian and economic crises anywhere in the world, and produced a famine affecting large parts of the country. A measles outbreak has reportedly killed fifty children in displacement camps alone.
Even the prospect of return offers little relief. Aid organisations note that displaced people who go back to their areas of origin often return to destroyed homes in neighbourhoods lacking water, electricity and healthcare. Cities such as Khartoum, Gezira and Sennar face an enormous challenge in absorbing returnees, with infrastructure still in ruins and the economy shattered by war. Without large-scale reconstruction and livelihood support, analysts warn, return risks becoming simply a new phase of urban displacement — families moving from camps into devastated neighbourhoods with no basic services to speak of.