Sudan Enters Year Four of War as World's Largest Displacement Crisis at 14 Million
The Sudan war reaches its third anniversary on April 15 with roughly one in four Sudanese forced from home. UNHCR now ranks Sudan above Syria as the single largest forced displacement situation on the planet.
Tuesday marks three years since fighting broke out in Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The United Nations said Thursday that roughly 14 million people — about a quarter of Sudan's pre-war population — are now displaced by the conflict, with 9 million of them still inside the country and another 4.4 million sheltering across borders in Chad, South Sudan, and Egypt.
That total makes Sudan the largest forced displacement situation in the world. UNHCR's Mid-Year Trends 2025 report put Sudan at 14.3 million refugees and internally displaced people as of June 2025 — ahead of Syria (13.5M), Afghanistan (10.3M), Ukraine (8.8M), and Venezuela (7.9M). It was the first time in years Syria did not top the list.
The numbers, three years in
Displacement. The International Organization for Migration's Displacement Tracking Matrix counts approximately 11.6 million internally displaced people across Sudan's 18 states, with the largest single origin state being Khartoum (31% of IDPs), followed by South Darfur (18%) and North Darfur (15%).
Food security. The UN reports 21 million Sudanese — nearly 40% of the population — now face acute food insecurity. Of those, 6.3 million are in the "emergency" phase, the second-most-severe category in the IPC scale, one step below full famine classification.
Civilian deaths. The UN Human Rights Office recorded 11,300 civilians killed in 2025 alone, and more than 500 victims of conflict-related sexual violence were identified the same year.
Health system collapse. Through WHO's Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care, 201 attacks on Sudanese health facilities were formally verified between the war's start and December 31, 2025, with 1,858 deaths and 490 injuries tied to those incidents. More than 1,600 of the deaths occurred in 2025. WHO estimates 70–80% of health facilities in the worst-hit areas — Al Jazirah, Kordofan, Darfur, and Khartoum — are barely operational or closed. On April 2, 2026, ten health workers were killed in an attack on Al Jabalayn Teaching Hospital in White Nile State, including the hospital's medical director. WHO and UNICEF issued a joint statement the next day calling the attacks a grave breach of international humanitarian law.
A negotiating process with no traction
Marie-Helene Verney, UNHCR's representative in Sudan, told reporters this week that "we are not seeing clear progress towards any resolution." WHO's representative in Sudan, Dr. Shible Sahbani, described the country's essential health services as "shattered."
Successive rounds of US-, Saudi-, and Swiss-hosted talks between SAF leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — widely known as Hemedti — have produced no durable ceasefire. Aerial bombardment and drone strikes on both sides have escalated rather than slowed as the war enters its fourth year, and humanitarian access to RSF-held areas of Darfur remains severely restricted.
Prior to the current conflict, Syria had held the top spot in global displacement rankings for more than a decade.