All events · Borders by Force Again

Sudan War (SAF–RSF Conflict)

2023–ongoing · Sub-Saharan Africa

Displacement Mass Killing Sexual Violence Ongoing

Displaced

12 million

more than 12 million people had been displaced by 2025, including over 8 million internally displaced and roughly 4 million refugees in Chad, Egypt, South Sudan and other neighboring countries, making it the world's largest displacement crisis; some figures began to decline slightly in 2025-26 as limited returns occurred

Share of the population affected

25%

of the population of Sudan at the outbreak of the war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces in April 2023, 2023

Killed

62,000–150,000

excess mortality incl. disease and starvation

As of 2026. IOM and UNHCR have tracked roughly 9-10 million people displaced inside Sudan and 3-4 million across its borders since April 2023, with large-scale returns to Khartoum and Al Jazirah since mid-2025 running alongside new displacement from Darfur and Kordofan.

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What happened

Fighting erupted in April 2023 between Sudan's regular armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), former allies who had jointly staged a 2021 coup, after a dispute over the RSF's integration into the military. The war has devastated Khartoum and spread across the country, with especially severe atrocities in Darfur, including mass killings in El Geneina in 2023 and a prolonged RSF siege of El Fasher. By 2025 the conflict had displaced more than 12 million people, more than any other active crisis in the world, including over 8 million people displaced within Sudan and roughly 4 million refugees in Chad, Egypt, South Sudan and other neighboring states, alongside famine conditions confirmed in parts of Darfur. In January 2025, the United States government determined that the RSF had committed genocide against the Masalit and other non-Arab communities in Darfur.

Parties

The Sudanese Armed Forces under Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces under Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo fought for control of the state

Disputed

The U.S. State Department's January 2025 genocide determination against the RSF is disputed by the RSF and by Sudan's rival government; casualty figures for the war are considered a significant undercount given restricted humanitarian access, and estimates of the total death toll vary widely, from tens of thousands to potentially over 150,000.

The denominator

UN estimates put Sudan's population at about 48 million in 2023; the last completed census was in 2008 (before South Sudan's secession), so the figure is a projection.

The total adds people displaced inside Sudan to those who crossed into Chad, Egypt, South Sudan and elsewhere, and counts repeat displacements; several million have returned to areas retaken by the army since 2025, so the figure is a cumulative peak rather than a current count.

Where the baseline comes from

On the death toll

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine's capture-recapture study estimated more than 61,000 all-cause deaths in Khartoum State alone between April 2023 and June 2024, of which more than 26,000 were violent — the violent deaths in that one state exceeding ACLED's 20,178 recorded for the whole country at the time — and found that over 90 per cent of deaths went unrecorded. The same research group's national estimate for the first eighteen months was about 62,000 (roughly 18,900 direct and 43,500 indirect), rising to about 130,000 under a different indirect-to-direct multiplier, and the authors describe their own figure as very conservative. The US special envoy Tom Perriello told a Senate committee in 2024 that existing estimates of 15,000-30,000 could be an undercount by a factor of ten to fifteen and that 'some think it's 150,000'. All sources agree the true toll is higher and rising; ACLED's event-based tally is lower by design and should not be read as a total.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingSummary ExecutionSexual ViolenceTortureArbitrary DetentionStarvation and SiegeDestruction of Property

Documented by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan in its 2024 and 2025 reports — summary executions, arbitrary detention and torture by both the SAF and the RSF, ethnically targeted killing of Masalit, Zaghawa, Fur and Tunjur civilians, rape and sexual slavery, starvation used as a method of warfare during the siege of El Fasher, and the destruction of homes, hospitals, markets and water systems.

Formal findings

United States Department of State (2025) — Determination that genocide is being perpetrated in Darfur by the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias, accompanied by sanctions on RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo; the RSF rejects the determination — source
UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan (2024) — Found war crimes and crimes against humanity by both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, including indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling of civilians and civilian infrastructure, rape and sexual slavery, arbitrary detention and torture, pillage, and the RSF's assaults on non-Arab communities, in particular the Masalit in and around El Geneina — source
UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan (2025) — 'A war of atrocities': found large-scale deliberate targeting of civilians by both forces, and during the RSF's siege of El Fasher murder, torture, enslavement, rape, sexual slavery, forced displacement, the use of starvation as a method of warfare and the targeting of Zaghawa, Fur, Masalit and Tunjur communities; reported 300-1,500 civilians killed at Zamzam camp in April 2025 — source