Millions of people displaced by Sudan's civil war risk being left without emergency shelter as funding shortfalls empty aid warehouses, the UN refugee agency UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned in a joint statement on Friday, delivered at a UN briefing in Geneva.
Source: Reuters via Devdiscourse
An estimated 15.4 million people across Sudan urgently need emergency shelter and basic household items, the agencies said. Funding constraints mean humanitarian agencies can prioritise assistance for only about 10 percent of those in need. So far, 936,000 people have received assistance — leaving a large gap between needs and available resources.
Speaking from Khartoum during the Geneva briefing, IOM's Sudan chief Mohamed Refaat said the agency was struggling to maintain operations as resources dwindled. "Just this year, IOM was able to distribute more than 40,000 tons, but our warehouses are completely empty now," he said.
Refaat said agencies had already scaled back their ambitions because of limited funding. "We decided to serve only one out of ten. But even within the one out of ten, we could reach only 900,000 people with what we had," he said. He warned the number of internally displaced people could rise again despite recent returns.
Sudan remains the world's largest displacement crisis, more than three years after war broke out in 2023 when the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces clashed over issues including how to integrate their forces in a planned transition to civilian rule. Around 8.6 million people remain displaced within the country, while more than 4.6 million have fled across borders.
Returns are not closing the gap: more than 5.2 million people have also returned to their areas of origin, the agencies said, often finding homes, infrastructure and basic services destroyed — which is why returnees, too, are among those needing shelter help.
IOM distributed more than 40,000 tons of aid in Sudan this year, its Sudan chief Mohamed Refaat said — and its warehouses are now completely empty, with funding covering only about one in ten of the 15.4 million people who need shelter and household items.
The agencies called for urgent funding to replenish emergency stocks and prevent a further deterioration in conditions for displaced Sudanese. What happens next depends on donors: Friday's briefing set no new funding total and named no new pledges, so the test is whether money arrives before existing stocks — by the agencies' own account, already gone — leave the prioritised one-in-ten without even the reduced help planned for them.