GNV News, June 11, 2025

On June 3, 2025, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that since April 2023, when large-scale conflict began in Sudan, the number of people who have fled abroad has exceeded 4 million. Of these, 1.5 million have gone to Egypt, 1.1 million to South Sudan, and 850,000 have sought refuge in Chad.

In particular, the situation in Chad is dire, with more than 840,000 people having fled from Sudan to Chad since April 2023. Including Sudanese refugees that Chad had already been hosting, the total amounts to 12 million. However, reception capacity is extremely fragile, and there are shortages of everything necessary for daily life, from shelter to water.

Meanwhile, the number of internally displaced people is estimated to have reached 11.6 million by the end of 2024. The death toll from the conflict since April 2023 is unclear, but there are reports that as of June 2024 more than 60,000 people had died in Khartoum State alone, and the nationwide death toll in Sudan to date is thought to far exceed this.

The situation inside Sudan is also critical, with overcrowding, food shortages, water shortages, and poor sanitation causing infectious diseases such as cholera to spread. In particular, in the capital Khartoum and surrounding areas, which the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) seized in March 2025, cholera is spreading rapidly even as displaced people return, with more than 1,000 infections reported per day. Across Sudan, roughly half the population—25 million people—are facing severe food shortages, and if this situation continues, it is warned that hundreds of thousands could die over the next year.

Learn more about the Sudan conflict → “The Future of the Sudan Conflict”

Listen about Sudan on the podcast → “Sudan Conflict (GNV Podcast 141)”

An informal refugee camp in Chad sheltering more than 210,000 refugees from Sudan (Photo: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid / Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])