GENEVA: The United Nations said Tuesday that it expected more than two million people displaced in war-ravaged Sudan to return to Khartoum within the next six months, if security conditions allow.
Fighting erupted in Sudan on April 15, 2023 between the army, led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, headed by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
As the world marks the two-year anniversary of the devastating conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted around 13 million, the UN’s International Organization for Migration noted the need to prepare for many of the displaced to begin returning home to Khartoum.
The capital city became a battleground almost from the start, but since the army recaptured it last month, the agency said “we are seeing people returning, we are seeing hope coming.”
“Our estimate in IOM is that over the next six months, we will have 2.1 million returning to the Khartoum capital,” Mohamed Refaat, its chief of mission in Sudan, told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Port Sudan.
This calculation, he said, was “based on the numbers we understand that... left the capital when the war started.”
“So we estimate that 31 percent of... IDPs (internally displaced people) in Sudan after the war are actually coming from Khartoum,” he said, adding that the agency expected around half of them to “be returning back to Khartoum.”
The returns, he said, would depend on “the security situation and... the availability of services on the ground.”
Getting the city ready for a mass influx will be a challenge, Refaat acknowledged.
“We see that some spots in the Khartoum itself have been cleaned, but the process I’m sure will take longer,” he said, adding that “the electricity system in the whole Khartoum has been destroyed.”
Refaat also warned that “as we see people are returning, the war is far from stopped,” with thousands still being displaced elsewhere in the country, especially in the Darfur region.
“The conflict has to stop, and we need to put all effort for this conflict to stop,” he said.
But Refaat acknowledged that the funds raised to address Sudan’s towering needs were far from sufficient.
The IOM unveiled a response plan Tuesday asking for nearly $29 million to reach around half a million people in Khartoum, including returnees, he said.