Sudan’s war nears Syria-style refugee tipping point, UN migration agency says

BRUSSELS ― The Sudan conflict is at a tipping point similar to that of the Syrian civil war in 2011 and could soon see large numbers of people displaced into neighboring countries, the head of the United Nations migration agency in Sudan told POLITICO.

The crisis comes three years into a civil war that has created the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with more than 9 million people uprooted and an estimated 150,000 now facing catastrophic hunger, the U.N. said Wednesday.

“If you compare this conflict to what happened in Syria in 2011, when the displacement started building up … the migration routes started building and then the sudden outbreak of the conflict started impacting all the regional and cross-regional countries,” said Mohamed Refaat, chief of mission for the International Organization for Migration in Sudan. 

Unless serious efforts are made to resolve the conflict, “you might see more and more displacement entering the cross-border and beyond,” he said. A meeting between U.N. agencies in Sudan and EU officials will take place Thursday. 

Rafaat’s warning comes as the bloc cracks down on migration amid a surge in support for right-wing parties and concerns that wars in the Middle East and Africa could prompt a fresh wave of migrants to seek refuge in the EU.

In 2015, four years into the Syrian civil war, nearly a million displaced people arrived in Europe. At the time, Germany’s then-Chancellor Angela Merkel famously said “we can do it” (“wir schaffen das“) and encouraged EU leaders to welcome the displaced Syrians.

But in the decade that followed, a backlash against more liberal immigration policies fueled the rise of far-right parties across the bloc.

In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany is now the second-most popular party behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. France’s National Rally won control of several small and mid-sized towns in local elections earlier this month. And in Austria, a far-right party won national elections in 2024, only to fail to form a government.

Many EU countries have since instituted tougher immigration rules, while the bloc has cut several deals with countries on its periphery that aim to reduce incentives for immigrants to come to Europe.

Refaat said that Sudanese people fleeing war would be willing to return and rebuild their country as soon as they see a “blink of hope of stability.” But, he added, “if this blink is destroyed at this moment, if it is not being invested in, we might absolutely see the opposite.”

The horrors of Sudan’s civil war dwarf other conflict zones in scale and duration. Among the 213 attacks that have been recorded on health facilities since the start of the war, a massacre last year at a maternity hospital in El Fasher left some 460 people dead, according to the U.N.

Despite the carnage, the conflict is “invisible,” said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan. “The man on the street has no idea what’s happening in Sudan … I think that’s because there’s no easy narrative — it’s Africa, there’s always been conflict there. We should not accept that.”

Refaat, Yett and representatives of several humanitarian agencies, including the U.N. World Food Programme, the World Health Organization and UNICEF, were in Brussels to raise awareness about Sudan’s civil war and seek funding from the EU.

Appealing to Brussels, the U.N. agencies wrote in a statement that “immediate increases in flexible funding are critical to meet urgent needs and allow U.N. agencies to respond as the situation evolves.”

Zoya Sheftalovich contributed to this report.