Refugees fleeing Sudan’s brutal conflict are bearing the brunt of a global funding crisis that has forced the UN refugee agency to cut $1.4 billion in aid.
At the Sudan-Chad border, more than 60 percent of refugees now receive no shelter, despite arriving daily from the war-torn Darfur region.
“We have people arriving every day… not able to be given any shelter,” said Dominique Hyde, UNHCR’s Director of External Relations.
Thousands more remain stranded in remote areas of South Sudan, beyond reach of basic assistance or protection. “If we just had a bit more support, we could get them to settlements,” Hyde urged in an appeal for donor flexibility.
The cuts could strip 11.6 million refugees and displaced people—one-third of those served last year—of access to direct humanitarian aid.
Core activities such as refugee registration, child protection, and legal counselling have already been scaled back or suspended entirely.
In South Sudan, three-quarters of safe spaces for women and girls have closed, affecting up to 80,000 refugee women and girls.
These spaces provided critical services, including psychosocial care, medical treatment, legal aid, and support for survivors of sexual violence. “Behind these numbers are real lives hanging in the balance,” said Hyde. “Families are seeing the support they relied on vanish.”
Many Sudanese, facing a dead end in Chad and Egypt, are turning north toward Libya and into the hands of human traffickers. Refugees are being packed onto unseaworthy boats bound for Europe, risking death in desperate attempts to escape conflict and neglect.
UNHCR reports a 170 percent increase in Sudanese arrivals to Europe in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year.
