UN warns Sudan war is deepening, millions displaced as fighting spreads

Sudan’s war is entering another year with no sign of easing, and the civilian toll is still climbing. UNHCR representative Marie-Helene Verney said in Khartoum that about 14 million people have been forced from their homes since fighting began between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces on 15 April 2023, a scale of displacement that has spread across Sudan and into neighboring states.

The uprooting has reached almost every corner of the country. UNHCR said roughly 9 million people were displaced inside Sudan and about 4.4 million fled across borders into Chad, South Sudan and Egypt. Its Sudan emergency page says more than 3.2 million people have now crossed into neighboring countries, more than 800,000 refugees who had been living in Sudan have returned prematurely to their countries of origin, and 10.1 million people were internally displaced as of December 2025. UNHCR said it needs $928.9 million in 2026 to respond to the crisis in Sudan and nearby states.

The fighting remains active in large parts of the country, including the Kordofans, Darfur and Blue Nile State, and civilians continue to bear the brunt. Verney warned that aerial bombardments and drone strikes are increasing, with people facing attacks without warning alongside reported massacres, forced recruitment, arbitrary arrests and sexual violence. Human Rights Watch said activists raised concern in April over due process for more than 25 women charged by Sudanese army authorities with collaborating with the RSF, while local medical authorities and activists said RSF shelling killed 54 people and injured more than 100 at a market in Omdurman in February.

Hunger has become another front in the war. FAO said 21.2 million people were facing high acute food insecurity in September 2025, including 375,000 in catastrophe conditions, and said famine had been confirmed in El Fasher in North Darfur and Kadugli in South Kordofan. The agency said famine risk remained in 20 additional areas across Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan from October 2025 to May 2026. In Khartoum, even the veterinary laboratory can no longer make vaccines for animals, a sign of how the conflict has shattered food and public-health systems at the same time.

The health system has been battered into near collapse. WHO said 33.7 million people require humanitarian assistance in Sudan in 2026, including 21.0 million who need health assistance, and 11.5 million people have been forcibly displaced. The agency has verified 214 attacks on health care since the war began, causing 2,042 deaths and 785 injuries. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, it verified 13 attacks, including the 2 April strike on Al Jabalayn Teaching Hospital in White Nile State that killed 10 people, seven of them medical staff, and the 28 March attack on Al Deain Teaching Hospital in East Darfur that killed 64. With 33.7 million people in need of humanitarian aid this year, the highest figure in the world, Sudan’s war has become a national collapse that is still drawing too little international urgency.