Abstract

Sudan is currently experiencing the world’s largest internal displacement crisis, with more than 11 million people uprooted across all 18 states by early 2025. This paper conceptualizes displacement in Sudan as a cycle of debilitation, in which repeated uprooting, destruction of livelihoods, denial of humanitarian access, and psychosocial trauma reinforce one another across household, community, and national scales. Drawing on secondary data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), and World Health Organization (WHO), as well as operational reports and Sudanese field narratives, the study synthesizes evidence of displacement dynamics between April 2023 and mid-2025.
The paper concludes that durable solutions must be reconceptualized in contexts of cyclical displacement. Breaking Sudan’s cycle of debilitation requires not only humanitarian access and protection guarantees but also legal reform, investment in local actors, and adaptive monitoring systems capable of capturing the realities of repeated uprooting.