Inas was 30 years old, fasting for Ramadan, and caring for her 3 young children and her elderly father when war erupted in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in April 2023. What happened in the hours and days that followed changed everything for her. Three years on, she is still rebuilding her life.
Three years ago, Sudan changed overnight. On the morning of 15 April 2023, in the final days of Ramadan, fighting broke out in Khartoum, engulfing a city of nearly 7 million people in violence.
In the years since, more than 12.8 million people have been displaced, famine has been declared across multiple regions, and Sudan has become the largest displacement crisis in the world. For Inas, it began with a typical Ramadan day in the Mayo neighbourhood of Khartoum.
“We couldn’t believe what was happening,” Inas says. “[Shelling] took the lives of 4 of the dearest young men in our neighbourhood. They were just starting to break their fast when [the bomb] fell on them.”
That night, Inas and her family, which includes her 80-year-old father, who struggles to walk, and 3 children, aged 6, 7 and 10, could not eat or drink. They gathered what little they could carry and left their home on foot.
The long road to safety
The family walked for 2 hours through the streets of Khartoum to reach Inas’s brother’s house in the suburb of Al-Azhari. They were in shock and had taken almost nothing with them. When they arrived, the shelling still had not stopped.
The next morning, the family were off again, walking to the bus terminal, then getting on a truck towards the central city of Soba. Then it was another truck to reach the relative safety of Gedaref. As they travelled, the family heard shots and saw families with very young children running alongside their vehicles, desperate to escape.
The family thought they had found safety in Gedaref, where Inas has family. They arrived on Eid. It was, she says, the first time since leaving home that they felt something close to peace.
But their journey was not over. Over the following months, as Sudan’s displacement crisis deepened, Inas and her family moved through a succession of temporary shelters; a youth centre, a medical school dormitory and a school building.
When the schools reopened, the families sheltering in these buildings had to move again. In December 2023, Inas arrived at Abu Alnajas camp in Gedaref, run by Islamic Relief, where she still lives today.
Medical crises
Inas speaks clearly and directly as she tells her story, but when she talks about her youngest child, her voice softens.
“He is afraid of thunder. He is afraid of the sound of cars. He runs to me to hold him, and he stays in shock for an hour. He cannot speak. The planes and the shelling left a deep mark on him.”
This is one of the least visible consequences of Sudan’s ongoing crisis; the psychological toll on children who have witnessed violence at an age where they have no framework to process it.
In camps already stretched beyond capacity, with no electricity, limited schooling and nowhere for children to simply play and enjoy their childhood, the conditions for recovery are almost impossible.
Inas is also managing her own health. She has hypertension, a condition that requires regular medication to manage. At one point, in the chaos of displacement, her supplies had run out. For 3 months, she couldn’t get the medication she needed. Clinics in the area had only basic painkillers, so she went without treatment.
Fortunately, Inas received help from Islamic Relief’s cash assistance programme via a direct transfer to her bank account. With that support, she was able to buy her hypertension medication and has continued her treatment since.
A future that requires more than relief
Inas is grateful for the support she has received, but she also highlights a need that food parcels and cash transfers alone cannot address.
What she wants is a women’s development centre. A space in the camp where displaced women can meet, learn, share ideas and support each other. A place where mothers who are raising children with no electricity, no adequate schooling and no clear end to this situation can find some form of purpose and connection.
“We are living patiently,” she says. “But patience needs something to hold onto.”
Three years after a shell fell on her street, Inas is still surviving, still caring for her father, still raising her children, still managing her health, and still asking for something more than survival.
Across Sudan, more than 30 million people – over half the population – are in need of humanitarian assistance, waiting for the world to remember them.
Islamic Relief’s response
Islamic Relief has worked in Sudan since 1984 and is currently operational across 9 states, supporting some of the country’s most vulnerable and hard-to-reach communities.
In Gedaref, Islamic Relief operates displacement camps, distributes cash assistance, supports health centres and nutritional feeding programmes. We are also supplying food and clean water to hospitals treating malnourished children.
Since the conflict began in April 2023, Islamic Relief has reached more than 2 million people across Sudan with lifesaving aid including food, medical supplies, agricultural support and emergency cash transfers that allow families like Inas’s to meet their most pressing needs.
But the needs in Sudan are far greater than the aid being provided. Three years on, Sudan remains one of the most underfunded humanitarian crises in the world. Families are surviving, but surviving is not the same as recovering, and recovery requires far more support.
Sudan cannot wait. Three years of war have left more than 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. Support Islamic Relief’s Sudan Emergency Appeal and help us continue reaching families like Inas’s with the life-saving aid they desperately need. Donate now.
