GENEVA
More than 1 million people have returned to Sudan’s capital Khartoum over the past 10 months despite widespread insecurity and collapsing services, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.
The Sudan Return Monitoring Snapshot recorded returns between November 2024 and September 2025, as families moved back from other parts of the country and abroad.
“The scale of return to Khartoum is both a sign of resilience and a warning,” Ugochi Daniels, IOM’s deputy director general for operations, said in a statement. “I met people coming back to a city still scarred by conflict, where homes are damaged and basic services are barely functioning. Their determination to rebuild is remarkable, but life remains incredibly fragile.”
The Sudanese army in March claimed to have cleared Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters from Khartoum nearly two years after losing the capital to the paramilitary group. Civil war between the army and RSF continues since April 2023, killing thousands of people.
Khartoum remains home to more than 3.7 million displaced people, with current returns accounting for just 26% of the total, according to the IOM. The agency estimated that up to 2.7 million more people could eventually return, depending on security and humanitarian conditions.
Across Sudan, 2.6 million people have returned to their areas of origin since late 2024, including over half a million from abroad, mainly Egypt, South Sudan, and Libya.
The IOM warned that many returnees are living in damaged homes or overcrowded shelters with limited access to water, healthcare, or protection, while diseases such as cholera and malaria continue to spread.
The organization urged the international community to scale up recovery support and help rebuild essential services.
