The United Nations said Tuesday that nearly four million people had voluntarily returned to their places of origin in Sudan despite the ongoing civil war, warning they face stark challenges.
Now in its fourth year, the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands.
At its height, the war displaced over 12 million inside the country and sent over four million people fleeing into neighbouring countries as refugees, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
But with the war having moved on from Khartoum since the military retook it last year, many of those displaced by the fighting have begun returning home to the capital and other areas where they believe security has improved.
Between November 2024 and last month, 3.99 million people returned to their places of origin, especially Khartoum and the agricultural state of Al-Jazirah, southeast of the capital, IOM said.
“Many are returning because they believe security has improved. Others return because life in displacement has become unbearable,” IOM’s deputy director for management and reform Sung Ah Lee told reporters in Geneva.
“People want to rebuild. They want to return to their land, their homes, and their livelihoods,” she said, speaking from Al-Jazierah.
But she said “the reality many encounter upon arrival is stark … it is often the beginning of another struggle for survival”.
In Khartoum, she pointed out that many were returning to areas where homes and critical infrastructure, including water and electricity, had been heavily damaged.
And yet, she said, more than two million additional people are expected to return to Khartoum this year alone.
In Al Jazierah, one of Sudan’s most important agricultural regions, farmers were meanwhile returning to fields where irrigation systems and equipment had been damaged, threatening food production and livelihoods.
Lee said IOM had been able to reach four million people in Sudan with humanitarian aid since 2023.
But she said “the scale of needs remains immense”, pointing to the nearly nine million people who remained displaced.
IOM is seeking $170 million for its 2026 Sudan crisis response plan, but the agency said that plan remained “underfunded” by 97.2 million.
