UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi calls for peace as continued conflict in Sudan has pushed hundreds of thousands of people into South Sudan, adding pressure on the limited resources of a country struggling to recover from years of civil war.

Families continue to flee Sudan, primarily to Chad and South Sudan in search of safety as fighting rages on in the country.

Every day, about 1,800 people are arriving at the Renk transit centre set up by UNHCR in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State, near the Joda border with Sudan. Most are South Sudanese returning refugees who had been living in Sudan since fleeing South Sudan’s own civil war.

Originally built to accommodate 4,000 people, more than 13,000 people are now living in and around the transit centre in increasingly difficult circumstances. Babiker Suliman and his family arrived in Renk in
December 2023, to escape fighting in El-Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur region.

The Sudanese family of 13, live in a communal shelter with two other families at the transit centre. Babiker’s 90 year-old mother is unwell, he says he is yet to find proper treatment for her heart condition. Life here may not be ideal, but Babiker says his priority was to get the family to safety.

Over nine million people have been displaced since war broke out in Khartoum, making Sudan the world’s biggest displacement crisis.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi was in Renk, this week where he met families displaced by the conflict who shared the difficult experiences they went through escaping conflict.

Grandi is in the in the region ahead of this year’s World Refugee Day celebrations marked on June
20 every year.

Grandi also spent time in Kosti, in Sudan’s White Nile State, where he reiterated his deep concern over the atrocities inflicted on civilians living through a humanitarian emergency of devastating scale. The arrival of large numbers of people has increased pressure on communities hosting them. Grandi praised their generosity in welcoming those fleeing and asked for international donors to continue and step up their own support to the humanitarian response.

Escalating violence in El Fasher, and reported atrocities against civilians in Al Jazira state are driving yet more people to flee. Grandi called for humanitarians to be given full and safe access to civilians, wherever they are in Sudan, to provide urgent aid.

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