Flames engulf the Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company tower in Khartoum on Sunday, September 17 -- image via Twitter
By Global News Service
Over 5.3 million have been displaced in the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which entered the sixth month on September 15.
Over a million have fled to the neighboring countries of Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, while more than 4.1 million have been internally displaced to “3,855 locations across all of Sudan’s 18 states,” according to the International Organization for Migration.
Six states—River Nile, followed by South Darfur, East Darfur, Northern State, Sennar, and North Darfur—are hosting the highest number of these internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Before the fighting broke out between the different arms of the security forces which had together seized power in a military coup in October 2021, Sudan already had 3.2 million IDPs from previous civil wars. The five months of fighting between SAF and RSF has internally displaced over four million more, which puts the country’s total at about 7.1 million IDPs.
Sudan’s total number of IDPs “eclipses other war-affected countries with massive internal displacement, the next highest being Syria with 6.6 million people, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at 6.1 million people, and Ukraine at 5.1 million people,” the UN reported. “Sudan is now the country with the highest number of internally displaced people on earth… including an estimated 3.5 [million] children,” Save the Children International said on September 11.
from the Peoples Dispatch / Globetrotter News Service