Nairobi, 18 April 2026 – Two years after Sudan’s army–paramilitary war began, the country still hosts the planet’s biggest displacement emergency, with 9. 1 million people uprooted inside its borders and another 4. 4 million sheltering across seven neighbours, the International Organization for Migration says in its 2025 regional stock-take.
The report, published on Thursday, shows movement patterns becoming “increasingly fluid”.
A fresh surge around Zamzam camp and the fall of Al — Fasher in North Darfur pushed more than 41,000 Chadian returnees across the border between April and June alone, while Kordofan’s front-line towns—Kadugli, Dilling and El Obeid—sent 64,000 Sudanese southward into South Sudan during the final quarter. Yet the same document records a counter-flow: 3. 5 million Sudanese went home in 2025, lured by perceived lulls in fighting, visa problems abroad or spiralling food insecurity in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State.
Returns are a double — edged trend; 83 percent came from inside Sudan and 17 percent from abroad, but most arrived to cratered homes, broken water systems and farmland laced with unexploded ordnance. Internally displaced people still carry the heaviest needs burden.
A December survey led by IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix found one in three IDP households in “high or extreme” need, against 27 percent of host families and only 10 percent of returnees.
The share of displaced families living in crowded collective sites jumped from 16 percent in January to 25 percent in October, while famine-level food shortages are now confirmed in parts of Al-Fasher and Kadugli.
*Additional reporting by ImNews | Sources consulted: 5*
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By This original article was produced by the ImNews editorial team
Source: reliefweb
Source: International Organization for Migration
