While military juntas are taking control in some countries in the Sahel, on the Eastern part of the continent, an escalating civil war is tearing Sudan apart. Additionally the war has had direct impact on the region first by foremost causing an unseen humanitarian crisis. After becoming aware of the issue the European Union began to sign migration agreements with Egypt and other participating nations.
Thousands of Sudanese refugees are escaping the war into Egypt, where they are being held in detention camps and unlawfully detained. Throughout years more than 500 000 Sudanese fled to Egypt, but the Egyptian government cancelled the visa exemption, making entering illegal for them. Those migrants who made their way to Egypt have joined some four million Sudanese already living there. According to UN data, over 2.1 million people have crossed the borders of Sudan into neighboring countries since another armed conflict erupted on April 15, 2023.
The Various Backgrounds of the Ongoing Sudanese Conflict
The power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into a large-scale conflict in April 2023. In December 2023, renewed clashes broke out in Al Jazirah State, which led to more displaced people and disruptions to aid efforts.
On April 15, 2023, hostilities between the SAF and RSF broke out. Although the majority of the fighting has taken place in Khartoum, the nation’s capital, the conflict has affected other areas as well. There have been reports of ethnic cleansing in Darfur as a result of mass killings and displacement.
With over 12,000 fatalities and 5.9 million internally displaced people, this is the world’s largest internal displacement crisis. Over 7.2 million people have left their homes in search of safety both inside and outside the nation; roughly half of those displaced are children.
Sudan is now the country with the largest number of displaced people and the largest child displacement crisis in the world.
Edem Wosornu, of the UN’s humanitarian affairs office, told the UN security council in March: “Sudan is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory.” She called the rising famine among refugees “truly the stuff of nightmares”.
Due to the ongoing fighting, farms and businesses have been abandoned and agricultural land has been transformed into battlegrounds. The devaluation of the currency has made food prices in Sudan rise by 73 percent over the previous year and 350 percent over the five-year average, and there are severe cash shortages across the country. The ripple effects are felt in South Sudan and Chad where disrupted trade and massive population displacements are straining resources and intensifying hunger.
“Millions of people in Sudan, South Sudan and Chad are being threatened by starvation because this war has laid waste to agriculture, businesses and national economies – leaving its victims hungry and penniless,” said World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain.
“The fighting must stop now, or the region may soon become the world’s largest hunger crisis,” she added.
A Joint Investigation Over Illegal Detentions and Deportations
According to Amnesty International, the arrests and deportations took place in response to an August decree issued by the Egyptian prime minister which required foreign nationals to obtain legal status. Egypt “forcibly returned an estimated 800 Sudanese detainees between January and March 2024, who were all denied the possibility to claim asylum,” according to the organization’s findings.
A results of a six-month investigation conducted by the New Humanitarian (TNH) and the Refugees Platform in Egypt found Egyptian military has been deporting Sudanese refugees on a large scale since last summer. The reporters and humanitarian workers conducted several interviews during the process, and they have come to the conclusion that international refugee agreements were broken by Egypt on several occasions.
Altogether six military bases that have been used as detention facilities close to the borders with Sudan and Egypt have been identified by the joint investigation. One of these facilities is run by the police, and the rest are run by border guards. Since none of these locations were authorized to serve as official detention facilities, they were all unlawful under Egyptian law.
A few refugees also told the TNH reporters that they were shot at by Egyptian border guards in desert regions, after which they were taken into custody and deported without following the proper legal procedures. Others claimed that they were apprehended in towns and cities and charged with fictitious crimes by security officials, such as engaging in illegal smuggling, smuggling themselves, or “causing serious harm” to Egypt. Additionally, there is proof that some people have been deported even though they are refugees.
Although the UNHCR and the Global Detention Project have documented or reported on thousands of cases together, it is unknown how many refugees have been arrested and deported for unauthorized entry during the previous year.
Circumstances Inside the Detention Camps
Videos, photographs, and refugee testimonies reveal harrowing conditions inside the bases. One video taken at Abu Simbel military base has gone viral on social media.
Nasifa, a refugee stayed in a place that reporters verified as the Aswan border guard base told that the refugees were held in a part of the facility that looked like “a horse stable”, and that space was so cramped that new arrivals were put out in a cold courtyard. Among the detained refugees was a woman suffering from bleeding, another with high blood pressure, and a man with throat cancer, Nasifa said. In another camp, called Abu Ramad, there was no light, the water was insufficient, and a bathroom didn’t have any door. Besides, these secret bases have no legal mandate to detain people, they also don’t have access to lawyers or humanitarian workers.
Refugees detained in military-controlled areas are being rapidly deported by border guard forces without any legal process. Other refugees are being arrested and accused of spurious offences, including smuggling.
The Controversial Role of the EU In Abuse of Sudanese Migrants
Egypt has long been home to millions of Sudanese migrants, and the government has taken the side of the SAF in the current conflict. Despite the historical ties between the African countries, Sudanese refugees have faced growing hostility by Egyptian politicians and members of the public amid a deepening economic crisis in the country. In January, 2024, the Egyptian government said it would begin an audit to calculate the cost to the state of the refugee population.
The EU singed funding agreement with Egypt for the first time in 2022. The funding agreement designed to bolster the African country’s border forces, migration control to prevent onward migration to Europe. The common migration management project started with an initial €23 million, then a further €115 million over 2023. Last June, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, doubled down that the fund was for “border management, search and rescue and anti-smuggling operations.” Over this year the EU also pledged to provide €87 million for border management, anti-smuggling and anti-trafficking activities. The billions of dollars that the EU pledged to Cairo is a deal that critics say could make European countries complicit in the abuses taking place.
EU spokesperson Peter Stano said migration is just one of six pillars of intervention addressed by the new partnership with Egypt, and that “respect for human rights and international humanitarian law is a priority” for all EU-funded projects. “The EU expects Egypt, as other partners, to fulfill its international obligations including on the right to non-refoulment, and to uphold the human rights of all refugees and migrants,” Stanto said.
Nevertheless the block is under great pressure of the influx, last year, the EU recorded 380 227 irregular border arrivals, the highest number since the refugee crisis of 2015 to 2016.
