People sit on stairs outside shuttered stores at al-Hurriya street, a popular destination to buy electric home appliances before the Sudan war, as the shopping street reopens at al-Arabi market in Khartoum on July 15, 2025. (Photo by AFP)
Geneva: More than 1.3 million people who fled the fighting in Sudan have headed home, the United Nations said Friday, pleading for greater international aid to help returnees rebuild shattered lives.
Over a million internally displaced people (IDPs) have returned to their homes in recent months, UN agencies said.
A further 320,000 refugees have crossed back into Sudan this year, mainly from neighbouring Egypt and South Sudan.
While fighting has subsided in the "pockets of relative safety" to where people are beginning to return, the situation remains highly precarious, the UN said.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commander over the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The fighting has killed tens of thousands.
The RSF lost control of the capital, Khartoum, in March and the regular army now controls Sudan's centre, north and east.
In a joint statement, the UN's IOM migration agency, UNHCR refugee agency and UNDP development agency called for an urgent increase in financial support to fund the recovery as people begin to return.
It said humanitarian operations were "massively underfunded".
Sudan has 10 million IDPs, including 7.7 million forced from their homes by the current conflict, they said.
Over four million have sought refuge in neighbouring countries.
