Official Reports: A significant Increase in Displacement and Asylum Rates among Sudanese Civilians

Investigation: Hanan Kisha

Official reports from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) affirmed that about 20,000 Sudanese civilians are displaced from their homes daily due to the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, while another report by the Internal Displacement Monitor in Geneva stated that about 10 million Sudanese have been displaced since the outbreak of the war on April 15, 2023, which is the highest number ever reported for a single country worldwide since 2008.

Last July, the International Organization for Migration underlined that more than (10) million, equivalent to (20%) of the population, have been displaced. The IOM said that (20) thousand people are forced to flee their homes every day, half of whom are children.

The economic expert Dr. Muhammad Al-Nayir expected that there would be a return to areas where security situation has stabilized, as happened in Omdurman, from inside and outside the country. He told (Sudanese Echoes) that Sudan is the only country that witnessed a state of war, but no displacement camps were established in it, as is known by international standards. He revealed that some states hosted large numbers of displaced persons, and citizens sheltered a large number of families in their homes without prior knowledge. Dr. Al-Nayir pointed out that whenever stability is achieved in a specific geographical area, voluntary return will take place rapidly, whether internal or external, but those who return need the government to fulfill all its obligations towards them.

For his part, political analyst and editor-in-chief of Al-Tayyar newspaper, Osman Mirghani, said that the flow of displaced persons between Sudan and Egypt began before the war in 2019 after the cessation of several businesses and activities, including university studies, as a result of the demonstrations that continued to increase after the victory of the revolution. He told (Sudanese Echoes) that the number of Sudanese community in Egypt before the war was estimated at about (4) million, including business owners of various levels and university students. He added that students in Sudan were suffering from the long closure of universities or their disruption as a result of demonstrations and unrest inside them, to the point that the University of Khartoum, the first favorite for Sudanese students, witnessed the resignation of its students and they began searching for alternative universities in Egypt.

Mirghani acknowledged that the migration of business owners harmed the Sudanese economy in lot of ways, the most important of which was the lack of job opportunities and the increase in unemployment rates, particularly among youth. Moreover, migration led to the transfer of high Sudanese investments to the Egyptian real estate markets, as obtaining a rented apartment for dwelling was no longer sufficient, so hundreds of thousands of properties were owned for the purpose of trading in them or benefiting from their rental income. A number of major Sudanese investors, also, moved their factories and activities from Sudan to Egypt, where a stable environment, rewarding incentives, and a greater investment return are available. Mirghani said that after the war, more than two million Sudanese moved to Egypt, distributed in most of its governorates, in search of safety until they return, most of them are from the middle class or the poor, some of whom may have remittances from their relatives living abroad in various countries of the world.

Economist Professor Ibrahim Onur told (Sudanese Echoes) that displacement is a necessity in light of the course of events, as the numbers are large and the cities of Sudan are not prepared to accommodate those large numbers of people, and the danger is still present until now with the continuation of the war. He added that if the Sudanese did not migrate in large numbers outside Sudan and were satisfied with staying in the River Nile State and the eastern states, a problem would have occurred due to the lack of infrastructure in those states to accommodate all those numbers of people.